Troops were sent into the streets of cities around Pakistan yesterday to quell widespread rioting by supporters of Benazir Bhutto who blame the government for her assassination.
The interior ministry reported that initial results of an investigation suggested the Pakistan People's party leader had not been killed by bullets and shrapnel from a suicide bomb as initially thought, but by the shockwave from the blast throwing her against the reinforced sunroof of her official car as she tried to duck inside.
The official explanation and government claims that al-Qaeda was responsible failed to appease tens of thousands of Bhutto's supporters who gathered to see her buried in her ancestral home of Garhi Khuda Bakhsh. She was laid to rest alongside her father, another former prime minister who was hanged by an earlier military regime, and her two brothers, who both died in mysterious circumstances.
Some of the mourners chanted "General, killer!" accusing the president and former army chief, Pervez Musharraf, of abetting Bhutto's assassination.
As of yesterday evening, 31 people had been killed in clashes between protesters and the security forces.
Most of the casualties were in Sindh province, the PPP heartland, where paramilitary rangers were ordered to shoot violent demonstrators on sight and regular army troops were heavily deployed in the cities of Karachi and Hyderabad. Some witness reports said that in Hyderabad, soldiers refused to let local residents leave home. Ghulam Mohammed Mohtaram, a government official with responsibility for Sindh, confirmed that the provincial government requested the army's help "to control the law and order situation" in several cities.
Meanwhile, police reported that a blast in the Swat valley in the northwest of the country killed six members of the president's party, including the local election candidate. Television reports from around the country showed trains and buses on fire and cars with their windows knocked out and abandoned on the road. Hundreds of shops were torched and left smouldering along the route from Karachi to Bhutto's burial site.
In the southwest province of Baluchistan, rioters set fire to a railway station, several banks, government vehicles and the offices of a pro-Musharraf party.
Banks and schools around the country were shut as a result of the riots, the worst street violence Pakistan has witnessed in years. A spokesman for the interior ministry, Javed Iqbal Cheema, claimed that "vested groups" and criminals were taking advantage of the turmoil to loot and rob banks.
Official reports in the immediate aftermath of the assassination, which took place at a political rally in Rawalpindi, suggested that Bhutto had been shot in the neck and chest before being hit by a suicide bomb detonated near her car.
Yesterday, however, Mr Cheema said the three shots fired at her had missed but that as she ducked back inside the car the force of the blast immediately afterwards had smashed her head into a lever that operated the vehicle's sunroof.
The bomb killed 20 bystanders and called into question the viability of Pakistan's turbulent attempt to return to democracy after eight years of military rule under Mr Musharraf.
The prime minister, Mohammedmian Soomro, insisted yesterday that no decision had been made to postpone the parliamentary elections planned for January 8th. "Right now the elections stand where they were," he said. "We will consult all the political parties to take any decision about it."
However, Nawaz Sharif, another former prime minister and political rival to Bhutto, has vowed to boycott the poll. Bhutto had intended to take part but the PPP, now leaderless, has yet to make a decision on its participation.
If it opted to join the boycott while it chose a new leader, western diplomats said it would be difficult for the government to press on with the poll.
British diplomats were attempting to make contact with leaders of the PPP, and with Mr Sharif yesterday, to urge them to press ahead with the election and find common cause in a progressive secular front against religious extremism.
British prime minister Gordon Brown telephoned Mr Musharraf yesterday and later said that he had urged the Pakistani leader to "stick to the course" of building democracy and stability.