Raghubar's Life: [Hindi_Jokes] Benazir Bhutto Assassinated

The Pakistani opposition leader Benazir Bhutto, just seconds before she was assassinated leaving an election rally near the capital, Islamabad, on Thursday.

Witnesses said Ms. Bhutto was fired upon by a gunman at close range, quickly followed by a blast that the government said was caused by a suicide attacker.

Ms. Bhutto, a former prime minister of Pakistan, was declared dead by doctors at a hospital close to the park where the rally had been taking place. At least a dozen more people were killed in the attack.

Amid the confusion after the explosion, the site was littered with pools of blood. Shoes and caps of party workers were lying on the asphalt, and shards of glass were strewn about the ground. Pakistani television cameras captured images of ambulances pushing through crowds of dazed and injured people at the scene of the assassination.

The assassination comes just days after Pakistan's president, Pervez Musharraf, lifted a state of emergency in the country, which he had used to suspend the Constitution and arrest thousands of political opponents, and which he said he had imposed in part because of terrorist threats by extremists in Pakistan.

Ms. Bhutto had been warned by the government before her return to Pakistan that she faced threats to her security. In October, Ms. Bhutto survived another deadly suicide attack in the southern city of Karachi on the day she returned from years of self-imposed exile abroad to contest the parliamentary elections.

Ms. Bhutto's assassination immediately raised questions about whether the parliamentary elections scheduled for January will now go ahead or be postponed. Mr. Musharraf was carrying out an emergency meeting with top government officials Thursday following Ms. Bhutto's death, an aide to Mr. Musharraf said.

Mr. Musharraf's aide dismissed complaints from members of Ms. Bhutto's party that the government failed to provide adequate security for Ms. Bhutto. The government maintained that she ignored its warnings against such public gatherings and that holding them placed her and her followers in unnecessary danger.

Benazir Bhutto, 1953-2007

Benazir Bhutto in 1977, shortly after leaving Oxford. Two years later, her father, the former Prime Minister Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, would be executed. Ms. Bhutto would also spend time in prison. But her political lineage and sophistication made her popular in Pakistan and abroad.

Ms. Bhutto became the first female leader of a Muslim country when she became prime minister in 1988 at the age of 35. She would serve as prime minister twice, each time being dismissed because of corruption charges.

Ms. Bhutto's marriage to Asif Ali Zardari in 1987 was arranged by her mother, a fact that Ms. Bhutto has often said was easily explained, even for a modern, highly educated Pakistani woman. To be acceptable to the Pakistani public as a politician, she could not be a single woman, and what was the difference, she asked, between such a marriage and computer dating?

Ms. Bhutto at a news conference in 1988 in front of a poster of her father, Zulfikar Ali Bhutto. In addition, her two brothers suffered violent deaths.

Ms. Bhutto in 1997 with Nawaz Sharif, a political opponent who followed her as prime minister and had been the leader before then-Gen. Pervez Musharraf took over in a coup in 1999.

After Ms. Bhutto returned from self-exile this past October, two explosions during a triumphal parade in Karachi killed at least 134 of her supporters and wounded more than 400. Ms. Bhutto herself narrowly escaped harm.

Ms. Bhutto, 54, waved to supporters at a campaign rally in Rawalpindi on Thursday, not long before she was assassinated.

Pakistan: The Day After

A day after the former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto was assassinated in Rawalpindi, Pakistani paramilitary soldiers patrolled in Karachi in an attempt to curtail widespread protests and riots.