Former Pakistani Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto after ending eight years of self-exile, on Thursday, was returning home where hundreds of thousands of supporters thronged the streets to welcome her. The procession had moved peacefully all day long and was slowly reaching its decided destination but suddenly at around 12:45 am in midnight when her convoy was still on the streets of Karsaaz two major blasts took place, its being said that there was a suicide bomber who exploded himself near two police mobiles on the street which were accompanying BB’s procession, suddenly the explosives went off and as a result many of the innocent and poor people along with huge number of security guards and policemen were killed. Police has found some body parts of suicide bomber on the place of incident.
This extremely deplorable event took place even when some 20,000 security personnel had been deployed to provide protection against threatened suicide bomb attacks by militants. She was moving in the presidential security protocol which was provided to her by the govt. of Pakistan as a result of understanding between President Musharraf and Benazir Bhutto.
Intelligence reports suggested at least three jihadi groups linked to al Qaeda and the Taliban were plotting suicide attacks, according to a provincial official.
“She has an agreement with America. We will carry out attacks on Benazir Bhutto as we did on General Pervez Musharraf,” Haji Omar, a Taliban commander in the Waziristan tribal region on the Afghan border, said by satellite telephone. Now it’s not hard to see whose hand is behind this highly condemnable event.
There was a dramatic situation early this day as the tearful Bhutto disembarked an Emirates flight from Dubai and kissed the Holy Quran once she stepped on Pakistani soil. Millions of the people all over the country had gathered to greet her at the airport and majority of them were those who were poor villagers and under privileged people. Talking to a TV reporter one of a villager from the barren hinterland of Sindh province who was also a PPP supporter had said, “I sold the goats in my house to travel to Karachi and welcome Benazir Bhutto. Since the day she announced her arrival, we lit oil lamps every night, and my old mother offers long prayers for her safety and success”.
I ask myself what was the fault of these naive and harmless people who had come to show affiliation with their leader… but I can’t find any answer. Nobody had dreamt of this terrible occurrence.
The latest news on TV says at least 80 people have been killed and 100s injured seriously which have been rushed to Jinnah and Liaquat national hospital, and due to the great number of bodies there is not enough space in the hospitals to accommodate them all so hospitals staff is arranging some place and laying the dead bodies on the floor as they are running short of beds.
Many private channels are now showing the videos of explosion resulting bodies to spread on road. Our Information Minister Mr. Tariq Azeem giving interview to a news channel explained that shortly before the blast BB had come down to lounge inside her VIP enclosure in the truck and luckily she remained safe. It means only those were killed who were walking with her convoy, the lives of poor people have been lost….why??? Why these suicide bombers do this….their target was BB but what have they got??? Or was this done only for the sake of shattering the crowd??? Just to scare people off and to make the rally come to an end??? Don’t they consider the lives of people valuable??? Who are these sectarian extremists???
Benazir Bhutto has returned to lead her Pakistan People’s Party into national elections meant to return the country to civilian rule. For years Bhutto had vowed to return to Pakistan to end military dictatorship, yet she has come back as a potential ally for President Pervez Musharraf, the army chief who took power in a 1999 coup.
There is strong speculation that General Parvez Musharaf will end up sharing power with Bhutto after national elections due in early January.
Life loss of hundreds of innocent people is highly regrettable I genuinely wish if BB comes in power she must eradicate this sectarian extremism.
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