The assassination of Benazir Bhutto, less than two weeks before a fraught general election, has dashed western hopes for a peaceful transition to democracy in Pakistan. The murder of the 54-year-old former prime minister, the first woman elected to lead a post-colonial Muslim state, leaves the country’s largest political party without a leader and deprives the US of its best hope of providing a civilian façade to the unpopular rule of President Pervez Musharraf.

Ms Bhutto died at 6.17pm local time in Rawalpindi, a cantonment town close to Islamabad, Pakistan’s capital, after a suicide bomber attacked her campaign vehicle. It was the latest attack on the leader of the Pakistan People’s party since she returned from eight years of self-imposed exile less than three months ago. More than a dozen others were also killed in Thursday’s attack, which had been foreshadowed by deadly bomb blasts during her homecoming parade through the southern port city of Karachi on October 18.