Bhutto visits ancestral home

Former prime minister of Pakistan Benazir Bhutto is visiting her stronghold in southern Pakistan today, only days after an assassination…

Former prime minister of Pakistan Benazir Bhutto is visiting her stronghold in southern Pakistan today, only days after an assassination bid that killed 139 people.

Chanting "Long Live Bhutto", around 4,000 jubilant supporters of her Pakistan People's Party (PPP) cheered and clapped as Bhutto arrived in a bullet-proof vehicle at her father's vast mausoleum in their ancestral village of Garhi Khuda Baksh, near the town of Larkana in Sindh province.

Bhutto draped a shawl inscribed with Islamic verses and sprinkled rose petals on her father's grave. Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, Pakistan's first popularly elected prime minister, was toppled by the military in 1977 and later hanged.

"I feel very emotional. I wanted to visit the tomb of my father, the leader of the people, and offer prayers," Bhutto told reporters afterwards, before she was whisked to her family home flanked by paramilitaries in jeeps mounted with machine guns.

READ MORE

"There is still danger of attack, but Allah can protect everyone and I am not scared of these people (militants)," she added, saying she now felt better about her security. "It was an attack on me, on the Pakistan People's Party leadership and on democracy."

Hundreds of police and paramilitary troops were deployed at Sukkur airport for Bhutto's first foray outside Karachi since last week's attack marred her return to Pakistan after eight years away to avoid corruption charges.

At least one suicide bomber, possibly two, attacked her convoy in Karachi as it travelled slowly through a crowd of hundreds of thousands of supporters.

The government blames the Karachi attack on Islamist militants based in tribal lands bordering neighbouring Afghanistan, where al Qaeda and the Taliban are entrenched.

Bhutto suspects political allies of President Pervez Musharraf were also plotting against her, although she says she has no reason to believe he personally was involved.

Musharraf granted an amnesty that allowed Bhutto to return to Pakistan without fear of prosecution in graft cases hanging over her from the 1990. There is speculation the pair could end up sharing power after national elections due by early January.

Such a union would be welcomed by the United States, which is worried by rising militancy in nuclear-armed Pakistan.