Friday, December 28, 2007
Hundreds of thousands attend funeral of Benazir Bhutto (8:29 p.m.)
GARHI KHUDA BAKHSH, Pakistan -- Hundreds of thousands of mourning Pakistanis, many wailing with grief, packed the streets here Thursday as slain opposition leader Benazir Bhutto was laid to rest in the massive white mausoleum of the nation's most famous political dynasty.
Bhutto's assassination Thursday plunged the country deep into turmoil. Even as she was being buried, her furious supporters in other cities ransacked banks, waged shootouts with police and burned train stations in a spasm of violence less than two weeks before a crucial election.
The shooting and bombing attack on Bhutto -- which also killed 20 other people -- badly damaged plans to restore democracy in this nuclear-armed nation, a key US ally in the war on terror.
Prime Minister Mohammedmian Soomro said the government had no immediate plans to postpone Jan. 8 parliamentary elections, despite the growing chaos and a top opposition leader's decision to boycott the poll.
"Right now the elections stand where they were," he told a news conference. "We will consult all the political parties to take any decision about it."
Bhutto's mourners arrived in the town of Garhi Khuda Bakhsh by tractors, buses, cars and jeeps. Many crammed inside the mausoleum, and threw petals toward the ambulance. Women beat their heads and chests in grief.
"As long as the moon and sun are alive, so is the name of Bhutto," they chanted.
An Islamic cleric led mourners in prayers as her flag-draped coffin was placed in a grave beside her father, Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto, also a popular former prime minister who met a violent death.
Some mourners angrily blamed President Pervez Musharraf's government for Bhutto's death. Other's said they felt adrift and hollow.
"I don't know what will happen to the country now," said Nazakat Soomro, 32.
Bhutto's funeral procession began Friday afternoon at her ancestral residence in the southern town of Naudero. Her plain wood coffin, draped in the red, green and black flag of her Pakistan People's Party, was carried in a white ambulance toward the marble mausoleum, about five kilometers (three miles) away, passing a burning passenger train on the way.
Bhutto's husband, Asif Ali Zardari, and her three children arrived from Dubai to attend the funeral, party officials said.
Violence roared through much of the country Friday. A mob in Karachi looted at least three banks and set them on fire, and engaged in a shootout with police that left three officers wounded, police said.
About 7,000 people in the central city of Multan ransacked seven banks and a gas station and threw stones at police, who responded with tear gas. In the capital, Islamabad, about 100 protesters burned tires in a commercial quarter of the city.
Paramilitary rangers were given the authority to use live fire to stop rioters from damaging property in southern Pakistan, said Maj. Asad Ali, the rangers' spokesman.
"We have orders to shoot on sight," he said.
Angry mobs burned 10 railway stations and several trains across Bhutto's Sindh province, forcing the suspension of all train service between the city of Karachi and the eastern Punjab province, said Mir Mohammed Khaskheli, a senior railroad official.
The rioters uprooted one section of the track leading to the Indian border, he said.
An Associated Press reporter saw nine cars of a train completely burned. Witnesses said all the passengers were pulled out before the train was torched.
About 4,000 Bhutto supporters rallied in the northwestern city of Peshawar and several hundred ransacked the empty office of the main pro-Musharraf party, burning furniture and stationery.
Protesters shouted "Musharraf dog" and "Bhutto was alive yesterday, Bhutto is alive today." Dozens of police in riot gear followed the protesters but did not intervene.
In other violence, a roadside bomb killed a local leader from the ruling party and three of his associates as they drove through Swat in northwestern Pakistan, where troops have been fighting followers of a pro-Taliban cleric in recent months, said Mohib Ullah, a local police official.
Many cities were nearly deserted as businesses closed and public transportation came to a halt at the start of three days of national mourning for Bhutto.
Troops were put on alert in four cities in Sindh as a precaution, said army spokesman Maj. Gen. Waheed Arshad.
A coalition of opposition parties called for a general strike, said Mohammed Usman Kakar, a leader in the All Parties Democratic Movement, which comprises small anti-Musharraf groups.
"The repercussions of her murder will continue to unfold for months, even years," read a mournful editorial in the Dawn newspaper. "What is clear is that Pakistan's political landscape will never be the same, having lost one of its finest daughters."
As many Pakistanis mourned, others demanded answers.
Musharraf blamed the attack on the resurgent Islamic militants Pakistan is fighting along the border region with Afghanistan, pledging in a nationally televised speech that "we will not rest until we eliminate these terrorists and root them out."
But authorities said they had yet to identify the attacker.
"It is too early to say who may have been responsible," said Saud Aziz, the chief of police in Rawalpindi, the city near Islamabad where the attack took place. A joint task force of police and officials from other law enforcement agencies were investigating, he said.
FBI spokesman Richard Kolko in Washington said the agency was trying to determine the validity of a purported claim of responsibility for the attack by al-Qaida.
U.S. President George W. Bush, who spoke briefly by phone with Musharraf, looked tense as he spoke to reporters, denouncing the "murderous extremists who are trying to undermine Pakistan's democracy."
In the wake of the killing, Nawaz Sharif, another former premier and leader of a rival opposition party, announced his party would boycott the elections.
"I am worried about the country, about the people. Nobody is secure, there is total insecurity," Sharif said.
The election was seen as a pivotal step toward restoring democracy eight years after Musharraf seized power in a coup. It also was intended to restore credibility to the government after Musharraf used a six-week state of emergency to arrest thousands of political opponents and crack down on the independent judiciary.
However, with Sharif's party on the sidelines and Bhutto's party leaderless and in disarray, the election will have little if any credibility.
Bhutto's death closed another grim chapter in Pakistan's bloodstained history, 28 years after her father, Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto, another ex-prime minister, was hanged by a military dictatorship just 3 kilometers (about 2 miles) from where she was killed.
The U.N. Security Council vigorously denounced the killing and urged "all Pakistanis to exercise restraint and maintain stability in the country."
The United States, meanwhile, struggled to reformulate its plan to stabilize the country based on a rapprochement between Bhutto and Musharraf.
Next to Musharraf, Bhutto, 54, was the country's best known political figure, serving two terms as prime minister between 1988 and 1996. She was respected in the West for her liberal outlook and determination to combat Islamic extremism.
Bhutto had just addressed more than 5,000 supporters in Rawalpindi on Thursday when the attacker struck as she was leaving the rally in a white sports utility vehicle.
A smiling Bhutto had stuck her head out of the sunroof to respond to youths chanting her name, said Sardar Qamar Hayyat, an official from Bhutto's party.
"Then I saw a thin, young man jumping toward her vehicle from the back and opening fire. Moments later, I saw her speeding vehicle going away. That was the time when I heard a blast and fell down," Hayyat said. (AP)
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