2007-10-19

KARACHI, Pakistan -- Hours after surviving a suicide bombing that killed up to 136 of her supporters and maimed more than 250 others, a defiant Benazir Bhutto said today that death threats would not deter her from the quest to bring civilian rule to Pakistan.

Both she and Pakistani authorities blamed Islamic militants for the attack, although accounts of the night's chaotic events provided by police and by Bhutto and her associates differed on several key points.

Police said the initial investigation pointed to the attack being the work of a single assailant, who first threw a grenade toward the vehicle carrying Bhutto and dozens of party members in a midnight procession through the streets of Karachi, then blew himself up in a thunderous blast a few feet from her steel-fortified vehicle.

Bhutto, however, told a news conference that there had been at least two assailants, and that shots had been fired in an attempt to disable the vehicle in which she was riding.

The former prime minister, who returned to Pakistan on Thursday after eight years of self-imposed exile to lead her party in parliamentary elections, said she had been aware of death threats, including specific warnings that more than one suicide squad had been dispatched to kill her and her followers.

"There was one suicide squad from Taliban elements, one suicide squad from Al Qaeda, one suicide squad from Pakistani Taliban and a fourth, I believe a group from Karachi," she told reporters this afternoon in her first public statement since the attack, thought to be the country's worst suicide bombing ever.

The families of victims began burying their dead today, though at least a dozen sets of remains were still unclaimed at the city morgue. Morgue attendants said they consisted of mangled parts that were difficult to identify.

Many of the dead and injured were from out of town, having traveled to Karachi to meet Bhutto. Hospitals were besieged with calls from frantic relatives.

At the scene of the attack, about five miles from Karachi's international airport, investigators collected evidence, including ball bearings that were used to intensify the blast's deadly effect. At midmorning, debris was still scattered over the roadway and median strip, although Karachi traffic, a wild mix of cars and trucks, motorbikes and auto-rickshaws, was roaring by even as the investigators worked.

The vehicle that carried Bhutto, its sides stained with soot and blood, was taken away by crane.

At her news conference, the 54-year-old Bhutto told how she had descended into the interior of the vehicle only moments before the enormous blast. After more than eight hours of standing on a truck-mounted stage, she said, her feet hurt and she wanted to change her shoes.

While inside the vehicle, she said, she and an aide began going over a speech she was to deliver at the mausoleum of Pakistan's founder, Mohammed Ali Jinnah.

When the first and smaller of two explosions struck, her aide wanted to rush out onto the open-air platform to see what had happened, but Bhutto held her back, she said.

"I said, 'Wait.' Some people had been letting off firecrackers into the sky. . . . Something in my heart told me this was not a firecracker, it was a suicide attack."

Bhutto was hustled from the vehicle unhurt by security guards and taken to her residence in Karachi.

The former leader said she grieved for those killed while coming out to welcome her, but she added that she would not be deterred from making public appearances and leading her party in its campaign.

"We believe democracy alone can save Pakistan from disintegration and a militant takeover," she said. "We are prepared to risk our lives, and we are prepared to risk our liberty, but we are not prepared to surrender our great nation to the militants."

She also said President Pervez Musharraf had called her today to express sorrow and distress over the attack. Musharraf has won another term as president, but the election is under court challenge. He has also promised to relinquish his post as military chief, but only if the Oct. 6 vote giving him a new five-year term is upheld by the court.

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