Bhutto blames Taliban, al-Qaida for explosions

updated 9:54 a.m. ET Oct. 19, 2007

KARACHI, Pakistan - Benazir Bhutto blamed al-Qaida and Taliban militants Friday for the assassination attempt against her that killed at least 136 people, and declared she would risk her life to restore democracy in Pakistan and prevent an extremist takeover.

The former premier presented a long list of foes who would like to see her dead — from loyalists of a previous military regime that executed her politician father to Islamic hard-liners bent on stopping a female leader from modernizing Pakistan.

“We believe democracy alone can save Pakistan from disintegration and a militant takeover,” Bhutto said at a news conference less than 24 hours after bombs exploded near a truck carrying her in a festive procession marking her return from eight years of self-imposed exile.

“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,” the pro-Western leader added.

Bhutto, who came home to lead her party in January parliamentary elections, said she had been warned before returning that Taliban and al-Qaida suicide squads would try to kill her, saying a “brotherly” nation provided her with a list of telephone numbers of suicide squads.

Bhutto warned of threat
She said she warned of that threat in a letter Tuesday to Pakistan’s current military leader, President Gen. Pervez Musharraf, with whom she has been negotiating a possible political alliance.

“There was one suicide squad from the Taliban elements, one suicide squad from al-Qaida, one suicide squad from Pakistani Taliban and a fourth — a group — I believe from Karachi,” she said.

Bhutto said it was suspicious that streetlights failed as her procession made its way from Karachi’s airport toward downtown Thursday night. She said cell phone service also was out.

“I’m not accusing the government, but certain individuals who abuse their positions and powers,” she said.

She pointed to supporters of the former military regime of Gen. Mohammad Zia ul-Haq, who seized power in 1977 and hanged her father, deposed Prime Minister Zulfikar Ali Bhutto. Zia also jailed Benazir Bhutto several times before his death in a mysterious plane crash in 1988.

Bhutto said the military thugs of the 1970s who terrorized her family and today’s Islamic militants share the same thirst “to kill and maim innocent people and deny them the right to a representative government.”

All of them want to destabilize Pakistan, and the suicide bomb attack was part of that campaign, she said.

“It was an attack by a militant minority that does not enjoy the support of the people of Pakistan, that has only triumphed in a military dictatorship,” she said.

U.S. reacts to blasts
Washington said the blasts showed the challenges as Pakistan tries to build a moderate Islamic democracy.

“It tells you a lot about the kinds of people we are battling against every day, that any flicker of democracy they want to find a way to beat it down and stamp it out,” said White House deputy press secretary Tony Fratto.

Aamir Qureshi / AFP - Getty Images Flames burn in the center of Karachi after two explosions strike near a procession carrying former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto, who returned to Pakistan Thursday after eight years of self-imposed exile.

Pakistani officials, who said Thursday night’s bloodshed would not disrupt election plans, said one suicide bomber staged the attack.

Authorities said the assault bore the hallmarks of a Taliban-allied warlord and the al-Qaida terror network — with a man first throwing a grenade into the sea of people around Bhutto’s convoy and then blowing himself up with a bomb wrapped in bolts and other pieces of metal.

Pakistani television showed video of what it said was the severed head of the suspected bomber, an unshaven man in his 20s with curly hair and green eyes.

Officials said the warlord was Baitullah Mehsud, a leader on the unstable Afghan border who threatened earlier this month to meet Bhutto’s return to Pakistan with suicide attacks, according to local media reports. An associate of Mehsud denied Taliban involvement.

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