Benazir Bhutto 'killed in blast'

Pakistani former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto has been killed in a presumed suicide attack, a military spokesman has announced on TV.

Earlier reports said Ms Bhutto had only been injured and taken to hospital.

Ms Bhutto had just addressed a pre-election rally in the town of Rawalpindi when the bomb went off.

At least 15 other people are reported killed in the attack and several more were injured. Ms Bhutto had twice been the country's prime minister.

She had been campaigning ahead of elections due in January.

The BBC's Barbara Plett says the killing is likely to provoke an agonised response from her followers, especially from her loyal following in Sindh Province.

The PPP has the largest support of any party in the country.

Scene of grief

The explosion occurred close to an entrance gate of the park in Rawalpindi where Ms Bhutto had been speaking.

Wasif Ali Khan, a member of the PPP who was at Rawalpindi General Hospital, said she died at 1816 (1316 GMT).

Supporters at the hospital began chanting "Dog, Musharraf, dog", referring to President Pervez Musharraf, the Associated Press (AP) reports.

Some broke the glass door at the main entrance to the emergency unit as others wept.

A man with a PPP flag tied around his head could be seen beating his chest, the agency adds.

An interior ministry spokesman, Javed Cheema, was quoted as saying by AFP that she may have been killed by pellets packed into the suicide bomber's vest.

However, AP quoted a PPP security adviser as saying she was shot in the neck and chest as she got into her vehicle, before the gunman blew himself up.

Excerpted From: BBC online

One of Pakistan's best chances for sustained democratic reform has just been lost. Pakistan is a country to which few of us have given the serious attention it deserves. Often it is lumped into the broader Middle East along with the assumption that is "just another Muslim autocracy" enmeshed in radicalism and culturally and political antithetical to liberalism and pluralism. Yet Pakistan has on several occasions held successful democratic democratic election--even electing women more than once--and has a tradition of an independent minded judiciary that often challenges the executive. The country is complex, politically unstable, and in the process of a virtual and literal war between reform and radicalism. The future of the country is far from certain, but the outcome of the struggle will reverberate throughout the region and the world. Whatever the eventual outcome, the struggle seems more violent and the situation more volatile by the day. Bhutto's death will only worsen this situation and further hinder any move toward reform.