Tense Pakistan set to bury Bhutto
NDTV Correspondent
Friday, December 28, 2007, (Islamabad)
The body of assassinated former premier Benazir Bhutto was flown to her ancestral village in Pakistan's Sindh province, where hundreds of her supporters converged to attend the funeral following a night of violent protests across the country against her killing.
The body was flown in a military aircraft from Rawalpindi's Chaklala airbase to Sukkur, from where it was ferried by a helicopter to Mohenjodaro, near her ancestral home at Naudero village.
Bhutto's husband Asif Ali Zardari and their three children, son Bilawal and daughters Bakhtawar and Asifa, who flew in from Dubai last evening, accompanied the coffin from Rawalpindi.
The former prime minister's estranged sister-in-law Ghinwa Bhutto and niece Fatima too joined the family in mourning at her native village.
Hundreds of supporters of Bhutto's Pakistan People's Party (PPP) drove in convoys to Larkana, the Bhutto family's main stronghold in Sindh, to attend her funeral later in the day. Bhutto will be buried next to her father Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto at the ancestral graveyard in Garhi Khuda Buksh.
The coffin carrying Bhutto was earlier flown in a Pakistani air force C-130 aircraft from Islamabad.
She was assassinated in a gun and bomb attack that killed around 20 people, as she left a party rally in the garrison city of Rawalpindi, near the capital Islamabad.
Nawaz Sharif and his party members have decided not to attend the funeral because of unrest in the Sindh province.
The caretaker Prime Minister has ordered an inquiry into the assassination.
The caretaker Prime Minister has ordered a high-level judicial inquiry into the assassination and has reportedly said that general elections will be held on January 8, as scheduled.
Bhutto, a two-time former premier, was spearheading her Pakistan People's Party campaign for January 8 general elections.
Army has been called in and put on alert in Karachi. Rangers have been given shoot-at-sight orders after clashes were reported there this morning in which a policeman was killed.
There are also reports of a blast at the Kotri railway station in Sindh.
Before she returned to Pakistan recently, NDTV's Managing Editor Barkha Dutt spoke to Benazir who said she was not scared to return to Pakistan.
''Nobody can be killed till their time comes, I am putting my faith in my people,'' said Benazir.