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Bhutto's body being flown home
28/12/2007 10:12

The body of Pakistan's assassinated former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto was being flown home today, as violence was reported in cities across the nation.

Bhutto was killed in a suicide attack yesterday near the capital Islamabad.

The suicide attacker first opened fire at her as she got into her car and then blew himself near the car after Bhutto finished addressing an election rally in a park in Rawalpindi, some 30 km south of Islamabad.

Angry mobs took to the streets, blocking roads, torching cars and pelting rocks at police, local television footage showed.

Authorities called for calm and police asked residents to stay inside.

Many obliged, shuttering shops or rushing home from work, and surrendering the streets to protesters who set fire to banks, shops, gas stations and more, Pakistani media reported.

Bhutto's body was being transported to the family's ancestral graveyard in Gari-Khuda Baksh in Sindh province, where she will be buried later Friday, said Sen. Safdar Abbasi, a leader of her Pakistan People's Party.

The first leg was completed when, according to Pakistani TV stations, a Pakistan Air Force plane landed at Sukkur at about 3:15am today (local time). Bhutto's body was accompanied by her husband and three children.

Bhutto is expected to be taken the rest of the way to her ancestral home by helicopter. Authorities are avoiding road travel because it could be mobbed by grieving supporters.

Her coffin body was removed from Rawalpindi General Hospital late yesterday -- carried above a crowd of grieving supporters.



Xinhua/Agencies