ASIA-PACIFIC Benazir Bhutto was laid to rest in her family mausoleum on Friday as her assassination plunged Pakistan into crisis and triggered violent protests across her native Sindh province.
Thousands of mourners wept and beat their heads as Ms Bhutto, killed by a suicide attacker at an election rally on Thursday, was carried from her ancestral home in Sindh, in the south of the country, to the white, domed mausoleum.
Violence continued to erupt across Pakistan with unidentified assailants gunning down a policeman and wounding three in Karachi, and security forces in Sindh, Ms Bhutto’s home province, were given orders to shoot violent protesters on sight.
Police opened fire on protesters in the southern city of Hyderabad, wounding five, and about 4,000 Bhutto party supporters rioted in the northwestern city of Peshawar. A blast in the troubled northwest Swat Valley killed at least three people, including a ruling party election candidate.
Police in Indian-controlled Kashmir fired tear gas at hundreds of stone-throwing demonstrators, and were deployed around the main mosque area of Srinagar, the capital, as authorities feared more protests after Friday prayers.
Mohammad Mian Soomro, Pakistan’s caretaker prime minister, said Pakistan had not decided if there would be any change in plans to hold a general election on January 8. “Nothing yet. Elections stand as they were announced,” he told reporters.
Standard & Poor’s, the ratings agency, said Pakistan’s credit rating could be lowered if violence and political turmoil escalated and if the elections were postponed.
The government said it was investigating reports that al-Qaeda had claimed responsibility for Ms Bhutto’s assassination. The interior ministry said it was “unaware” of any such link, but that there was “every possibility” she had been on an al-Qaeda hit list.
The popular but divisive politician was the first elected female leader of a Muslim state and served as Pakistan’s prime minister twice between 1988 and 1996. She sustained fatal injuries as she left an election rally in the Pakistani city of Rawalpindi.
Within hours of her death, former prime minister Nawaz Sharif said his party, the Pakistan Muslim League, would boycott the elections in honour of Ms Bhutto, leader of the Pakistan People’s party, and demanded that Pervez Musharraf step down as the nation’s president. He also called for a nationwide strike on Friday, and said if the government goes ahead with parliamentary elections next month, it will ”destroy the country”.
Ms Bhutto’s party said it would observe a 40-day period of mourning.
Mr Musharraf, who came to power in a coup in 1999 against Mr Sharif, quickly condemned the attack and announced three days of mourning. “This cruelty is the work of those terrorists with whom we are fighting,” Mr Musharraf said. “I seek unity and support from the nation.
“We will not sit and rest until we get rid of these terrorists,” he said on Thursday.
Audio interview
Richard Edgar speaks to Jo Johnson, the FT’s South-Asia bureau chief, on his reaction to the assassination of Benazir Bhutto
Police officer Mohammad Shahid said a suicide bomber had fired gunshots at Ms Bhutto, 54, as she was leaving a rally in her campaign vehicle before blowing himself up. Local media said she had suffered head and neck injuries.
It was reported that about 20 others died in the attack, which was followed by reports of riots around Pakistan, along with more fatalities.
Western diplomats warned that the assassination would be a setback to the Bush administration’s hopes of bringing about “a transition to democracy” in Pakistan.
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Ms Bhutto’s return to Pakistan in October from eight years of exile was widely seen to have taken place with the support of the US administration, which was keen to promote a moderate politician who could extend a lifeline to Mr Musharraf and buttress the important US ally’s slender base of domestic political support.
“This is an extremely destabilising development for the future of Pakistan,” warned Hasan Askari Rizvi, a commentator on security affairs.
Ms Bhutto’s supporters held angry protests in several cities on Thursday night, attacking police and vehicles and starting fires. Up to 10 people were reported to have died in the violence.
Abida Hussain, a former member of parliament and a PPP leader, warned that violence would escalate.
“Conditions across Pakistan will spin out of control,” she said. “This situation will just not settle down unless president Pervez Musharraf steps down from power. Much of the anger is, in fact, directed against him.”
Officials initially reported that Ms Bhutto, who leaves behind three children, was safe after the attack, one of several attempts on her life since her return from exile on October 18.
The centre-left politician had been defiant in the face of threats, even after a suicide bomber killed almost 140 people at her homecoming parade in the southern city of Karachi.
Mr Sharif called the assassination a “tragedy” and blamed Mr Musharraf for the security lapse in Rawalpindi, the same town in which Ms Bhutto’s father, Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, was executed in 1979. “Benazir Bhutto was also my sister and I will be with you to take the revenge for her death,” Mr Sharif told grieving supporters outside the hospital in which she underwent emergency surgery.
The shock of the assassination reverberated around the world. Hamid Karzai, Afghanistan’s president, who had met Ms Bhutto hours before her murder, said he was “deeply sorry, deeply pained, [that] this brave sister of ours, brave daughter of the Muslim world is no longer with us.”
Gordon Brown, UK prime minsiter, called the killing “a tragic hour for Pakistan”. US president George W. Bush said his nation strongly condemned “this cowardly act by murderous extremists who are trying to undermine Pakistani democracy”.
The UN Security Council unanimously condemned the assassination, calling the killing of Ms Bhutto a threat to international peace and security.
