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Militant groups behind Bhutto slaying: minister

Al-Qaeda militants and the Taliban were behind the assassination of Pakistani opposition leader Benazir Bhutto, a top official said yesterday. Bhutto, a widely admired former prime minister, was buried in her ancestral home amid a raw outpouring of grief by hundreds of thousands of mourners.

Bhutto's assassination on Thursday plunged the country deep into turmoil and ignited widespread violence. At least 23 people were killed, and the government sent military troops into the streets of several major cities to maintain order, security officials said.

Bhutto's 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.

Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf initially blamed her death on unnamed Islamic militants. However, Interior Minister Hamid Nawaz said that "we have the evidence that al-Qaeda and the Taliban were behind the suicide attack on Benazir Bhutto."

He said investigators had resolved the case and would give details at a press conference later yesterday. The combined suicide-gunfire attack on Bhutto -- which also killed 20 other people -- badly damaged plans to restore democracy Pakistan, 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 and Bhutto's son, Bilawal, and her husband, Asif Ali Zardari, helped lift the coffin into the grave beside that of her father, Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto, also a popular former prime minister who met a violent death. Thousands of supporters then filed in to shovel dirt onto the grave.

Some mourners angrily blamed Musharraf, the former army chief, for Bhutto's death, shouting "General, killer!" "Army, killer."

Bhutto's death left her party without a clear successor. Her husband, who was freed in December 2004 after eight years in detention on graft charges, is one contender to head the party although he lacks the cachet of a blood relative.

Bhutto's funeral procession began yesterday 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 an ambulance toward the marble mausoleum, about 5km away, passing a burning passenger train on the way.

Violence roared through much of the country yesterday. A mob in Karachi looted banks, 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 Major Asad Ali, the rangers' spokesman.

"We have orders to shoot on sight," he said.

Army soldiers began patrolling the streets of Hyderabad and Karachi in an effort to quell the violence, witnesses said. In Hyderabad, the soldiers refused to let people out of their houses, witnesses said.

Earlier, angry mobs burned 10 railway stations and several trains across Sindh Province, forcing the suspension of all train service between the city of Karachi and 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.

Also see: Nation faces chaos after Bhutto's death

Also see: Pakistan star fears assassination may affect cricket tours
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