The Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP) Thursday demanded complete
inquiry into the assassination of PPP Chairperson and former Prime
Minister Benazir Bhutto, according to local press reports
Friday.
"We demand complete investigation as to who were behind the
attack," PPP deputy chief Makhdoom Amin Faheem told a news
conference in Islamabad.
"Bhutto family and the party should be informed about the
investigation," Faheem said.
He said that the PPP had decided to observe a 40-day
mourning.
"We are in the shock and we are mourning," the PPP leader said
when asked if his party would now take part in the Jan. 8
elections.
He said that U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice phoned him
and conveyed condolences on behalf of her government.
Faheem was sitting in the car with Bhutto when the attacker
fired three shots and later blast was carried out.
"Benazir was hit as she waved to the workers who were chanting
slogans in her favor. If Benazir did not go out of the car, she
would be saved," he said.
Faheem said that Bhutto sat in the car after the firing and the
blast and then she fell down in the car and died.
Meanwhile, according to local press reports, PPP supporters went
on streets chanting anti-government slogans and burned tyres in
protest in major cities of Pakistan like Rawalpindi, Karachi,
Peshawar and Quetta.
At least 10 people were killed and dozens wounded in fierce
clashes, the interior ministry said.
"The death toll in the unrest after Bhutto's death is 10, mostly
in Sindh province," ministry spokesman Javed Cheema said.
He said dozens of people had been wounded in the violence, which
hit several cities across the country.
Late Thursday night, a Pakistan Air Force plane carrying Bhutto
' s body left for her home town Sukkur in the southern Sindh
province, said PPP leader Senator Safdar Abbasi.
As a tentative program, late Bhutto is scheduled to be buried in
the ancestral graveyard of the Bhutto family at Gari-Khuda Baksh
Friday afternoon, he added.
Bhutto's husband Asif Ali Zardari and three children who earlier
arrived from Dubai also accompanied the body.
(Xinhua News Agency December 28, 2007)
