Slain Bhutto laid to rest in family tomb

Pakistan’s assassinated former Premier Benazir Bhutto was laid to rest in her family’s ancestral grave yesterday amid the wails and tears of hundreds of thousands of mourners.

Bhutto’s husband Asif Zardari wept as her coffin was lowered into the tomb at the white, three-domed mausoleum deep in Pakistan’s rural south.

Her son Bilawal appeared in a state of shock as a mullah led the throng in prayers and chants of “Allahu Akhbar” (God is Greater).

Those outside beat their chests in grief, while many shouted slogans blaming President Pervez Musharraf over her death in a suicide attack on Thursday as she left a campaign rally in the northern city of Rawalpindi.

A huge roar had greeted her coffin, wrapped in the black, green and red of her Pakistan People’s Party, as it was driven toward the Bhutto mausoleum in a white vehicle.

It took more than two hours to crawl the five kilometres from her family’s home in Naudero to the private mausoleum in the village of Ghari Khuda Baksh where Bhutto’s father and two brothers are also buried.

“We will take revenge for her death, we believe Musharraf was responsible,” said one mourner, Mohabbat Ali.

“It was tyrannical to kill her,” railed another, Ghulam Nabi, adding, “She was innocent, she was the nation’s leader and admired all over the world.”

As authorities struggled to keep a lid on the violence that erupted across the country, the Government pointed a finger at Al-Qaeda for her slaying.

The scale of the unrest has effectively paralysed Pakistan triggering alarm bells around the world and throwing scheduled January 8 elections into disarray.

Interior Ministry spokesman Brigadier Javed Cheema said Bhutto had been on an Al-Qaeda hit-list and it was likely the extremist network played a role in Thursday’s suicide attack that killed her and around 20 others.

“Benazir has been on the hit-list of Al-Qaeda,” he told AFP. “Now there is every possibility that Al-Qaeda is behind this tragic attack to undermine the security of Pakistan.”

Officials ordered paramilitary forces in Karachi, a Bhutto stronghold, to shoot rioters on sight and sent troops into several other cities in the south.

At least 19 people have been killed in violence since Bhutto’s death, and there have been angry demonstrations in several cities, with mobs ransacking offices and torching buildings and vehicles.

Police fired tear gas at protesters in Rawalpindi and a crowd of some 1,500 stormed the office of a pro-government party in Peshawar. The two-time former premier was interred next to her father, Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto, also a prime minister, who was executed by the military in 1979 after he was ousted from power.

Bhutto, 54, was leaving a rally where she had been campaigning for the vote when a suicide bomber shot her in the neck before blowing himself up. The January 8 elections appear increasingly in doubt, with Pakistan’s other major opposition figure, Nawaz Sharif, pulling his party out.

AFP