PAKISTAN: Pakistani police release photograph of suicide bomber who killed at least 139 people in Friday's car bomb attack

Pakistani police released a photograph on Saturday (October 20) of a suicide bomber who killed at least 139 people, as opposition leader Benazir Bhutto worked out her next step after the bloody start to her comeback campaign. The militant threat demonstrated to such devastating effect in Karachi on Friday raised fears over the prospects for a national election due in early January that is supposed to mark a transition from military-led to civilian-led democracy. Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz said the general election would not be affected but government officials had indicated that campaigning could be restricted because of security worries. Newspapers carried photographs of the head of the suicide bomber propped on a white sheet. The dead eyes stared blankly out of a chubby, unshaven face. Police said at least 139 people were killed in Friday's attack and 325 were wounded. On Saturday, a car bomb killed four people in the southwestern province of Baluchistan. Suicide bombings have multiplied since the army stormed the Red Mosque in the capital Islamabad to crush an armed student movement in July. The United States and its allies want to see elections go-ahead in nuclear-armed Pakistan in the hope that a moderate, pro-Western government will emerge to fight the al Qaeda and Taliban threat and help Western forces stabilise Afghanistan. Washington is believed to have quietly promoted an alliance between Bhutto and its ally President Pervez Musharraf, the army chief who came to power in a coup in 1999. For now, Bhutto has put on ice plans to go to Larkana, a town 240 km (150 miles) northeast of Karachi, to pray at the tomb of her father, Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, Pakistan's first popularly elected prime minister, who was deposed and executed after another military coup three decades ago. Angry Bhutto supporters burnt tyres, threw rocks at cars and forced shops to shut in some Karachi neighbourhoods on Saturday but there were no reports of casualties, police said. The hundreds of thousands of supporters who turned out to greet Bhutto 10 years after she last held power, and eight years since she went into self-imposed exile, showed she retained more mass appeal than any other Pakistani politician. Investigators' main focus will be on who sent Friday's suicide bomber. Government officials have said the culprits were Islamist militants but they are uncertain which group. Pakistani Taliban working with al Qaeda this month threatened to kill Bhutto, who has talked of working with Musharraf to fight militancy. But Bhutto, at a news conference on Friday, said she had more to fear from unidentified members of the power structure who she described as allies of the "forces of militancy". She said she had given names to Musharraf and was not blaming the government.

ITN Source | October 20, 2007

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