Islamabad - A grieving Pakistan prepared Friday to bury opposition leader Benazir Bhutto, whose assassination sparked nationwide riots and the country's most serious political crisis in decades. Bhutto, 54, killed Thursday in a shooting-suicide bomb attack after speaking at an election rally in the city of Rawalpindi, was scheduled to be buried Friday afternoon at her family's ancestral home in Garhi Khuda Baksh village in the southern province of Sindh.
Throngs of local supporters from her Pakistan People's Party began arriving early Friday in the village to say farewell to the two-time prime minister and political icon.
In the weeks leading up to her death, Bhutto had claimed that elements within President Pervez Musharraf's military-backed government and Pakistan's security services who had sympathies with Islamic extremists were plotting to kill her.
However, Musharraf in an address to the nation Thursday night laid the blame on pro-Taliban and al-Qaeda extremists that launched more than 50 suicide attacks across the country in 2007.
Regardless, newspaper editorials on Friday said Bhutto's demise imperiled Pakistan's attempts to return to civilian government after eight years of a government headed by Musharraf, a recently retired army general who seized power in a coup in 1999.
"Her assassination threatens to derail the entire process of Pakistan returning to elected democratic rule, especially by a coalition of moderate and liberal leaders who could confront the growing menace of religious extremism and fanaticism," The News said.
An editorial in The Nation newspaper said: "It's a moment of reflection for [Musharraf] how pervasive and dangerous the extremist mindset, not much in evidence in the 1990s, has become since he joined hands with the US and its so-called war on terror. He should be taking steps to pave the way for the restoration of real democracy."
US President George W Bush sees Musharraf as a critical ally in fighting terrorism, and Musharraf's administration had pushed him to return to democracy to avert a prolonged crisis that could affect military operations against al-Qaeda and Taliban militants along Pakistan's western border with Afghanistan.
Bhutto had claimed that Musharraf felt threatened by large crowds attending her campaign rallies ahead of January 8 parliamentary elections and those of fellow opposition leader Nawaz Sharif's Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz.
Minutes before her death, Bhutto said that "political orphans tried to postpone the elections by imposing an emergency in the country but failed," referring to Musharraf's move to take emergency powers in early November, which he lifted this month.
Shortly after, a lone attacker fired several bullets at Bhutto as she waved to supporters from the sunroof of her white Range Rover before blowing himself up as her convoy fled the scene. Hospital officials said she died from a bullet wound to the neck, and at least 22 others were killed in the bombing.
News of her death sparked riots in cities and towns across the country that killed at least 18 people and damaged or destroyed hundreds of vehicles, shops, banks and other buildings.
Bhutto's body, accompanied by her husband and three adult children, was flown overnight on an Air Force C-130 transport plane to Sindh province.
She is to be buried inside the tomb of her father, Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto, also a former prime minister who was ousted by the Pakistani military in 1977 and hanged two years later. Two of her brothers died under mysterious circumstances and are also buried there.
Bhutto had visited the tomb on October 21, three days after returning from exile and surviving a suicide bombing on her homecoming parade in the southern city of Karachi that killed 140 people.
