Pakistan Blames Al-Qaida For Bhutto Slaying

Pakistan's interior minister said Friday that al-Qaida and the Taliban were behind the assassination of Benazir Bhutto.

Link: CNN Coverage

An “al-Qaida leader” congratulated his followers for the assassination of Benazir Bhutto, Pakistan’s Interior Ministry spokesman said.

The government captured the remark by militant leader Baitullah Mehsud in an “intelligence intercept,” ministry pokesman Javed Iqbal Cheemo said.

Cheema described Mehsud as an "al-Qaida leader" who was also behind the Karachi bomb blast in October against Bhutto that killed more than 140 people.

Mehsud is regarded as the commander of pro-Taliban forces in the lawless Pakistani tribal region South Waziristan where al-Qaida fighters are also active.

Bhutto was killed Thursday when a suicide attacker shot at her and then blew himself up as she left a rally in Rawalpindi. Authorities initially said she died from bullet wounds, and a surgeon who treated her said she died from the impact of shrapnel on her skull.

But Cheema said she was killed when she tried to duck back into the vehicle, and the shock waves from the blast knocked her head into a lever attached to the sunroof, fracturing her skull, he said.

The FBI and Homeland Security reportedly told U.S. law enforcement agencies Thursday that al-Qaida has claimed responsibility for the assassination of the Pakistani opposition leader and former prime minister.

That word came in a bulletin that a law enforcement official summarized for The Associated Press. The official asked to remain anonymous, because he's not authorized to speak publicly about the bulletin.

The bulletin cites Islamist Web sites as the sources of the al-Qaida claim. The sites also say that al-Qaida's No. 2 leader, Ayman al-Zawahri, had planned the assassination. Al-Zawahri decried Bhutto's return in a video message this month and called for attacks on all the candidates in Pakistan's parliamentary elections.

Bhutto had pledged to redouble Pakistan's fight against Islamic militants. She had received threats from virtually all militant groups that make Pakistan their home. That includes al-Qaida and Taliban-style radicals and tribal insurgents along the Afghan border.

Pakistan Mourns

Cries of "Benazir is alive, Bhutto is alive," were heard as hundreds of thousands of mourners flocked to Benazir Bhutto's funeral procession Friday.

The opposition leader's plain wood coffin made its way to its final resting place at the family mausoleum in Bhutto's ancestral hometown in southern Pakistan.

One mourner said Bhutto wasn't just an opposition leader, but a national one. He didn't know what was going to happen next.

Even before the procession began Friday, Bhutto's supporters rampaged through cities to protest her assassination less than two weeks before a crucial election.

Protesters ransacked banks and a gas station, and torched train stations. At least 23 people have been killed in violence since the 54-year-old former Pakistani prime minister was killed after a campaign rally. She was rushed to an area hospital for emergency surgery, but died about an hour later.

At least 20 others also died in the attack in Rawalpindi, Pakistan.

The government announced three days of mourning for Bhutto, including the closing of schools, commercial centers and banks.

Thursday's killing of President Pervez Musharraf's most powerful political opponent has plunged Pakistan into turmoil and badly damaged plans to restore democracy in the nuclear-armed U.S. ally.

There are no plans to postpone the Jan. 8 parliamentary election.