Thousands of supporters cheered Benazir Bhutto as she visited her ancestral village amid tight security on Saturday, her first trip in Pakistan since last week’s devastating bombings.
Bhutto, the first female leader of an Islamic nation, travelled to the remote corner of southern Pakistan to offer prayers at her family’s mausoleum, which was surrounded by heavily armed guards.
Crowds in the village danced and chanted ”Long Live Bhutto” as she arrived in a bullet-proof jeep from the nearby city of Sukkur, where thousands of supporters had showered her with rose petals.
”Good Muslims will never attack a woman. I will reach out to my people everywhere in Pakistan,” she said inside the mausoleum.
Bhutto has vowed to stay in Pakistan despite the blasts, which killed 139 people, ripping through her massive homecoming parade in Karachi, organised for her return after eight years in self-imposed exile.
She has pledged to lead her party in upcoming general elections, which are seen as a key step towards the nation’s return to democracy after eight years of military rule under President Pervez Musharraf.
Bhutto late on Saturday urged Musharraf’s government to compensate the families of those killed in the blasts, the worst in the nation’s history.
”The government should give compensation to the victims of the bomb blast. It was the failure of the government,” she told a press conference at her nearby family home.
Bhutto, a two-time premier, had been hunkered down in her guarded compound in Karachi since the blasts, which delayed the scheduled trip to the village.
Crowds savoured her visit on Saturday despite the delay, waving flags in the streets of Gahri Khuda Baksh village near Larkana as Bhutto spread flower petals at the tomb of her father inside the mausoleum.
”We are very excited our leader is back. God bless her. She is our hope, she is everything to us,” Abdul Karim shouted tearfully.
Her father, the late prime minister Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto, was buried at the mausoleum after he was usurped and later hanged in 1979 by a military dictator.
The site is also the resting place of the former premier’s two brothers — Shahnawaz, who was poisoned in southern France in 1987, and Murtaza, shot dead in Karachi in 1996.
Bhutto earlier flew into Sukkur from Karachi, about 600km south, where supporters chanted ”Bhutto prime minister” and threw rose petals as she left the airport for the short drive to the village.
Crowds lined the road as her jeep, cocooned in a convoy of police and paramilitary ranger vehicles, passed.
Bhutto has rarely stepped outside her Karachi home since the blasts, emerging only on Sunday to visit some of those injured in the blasts and the next day to visit the tomb of Pakistan’s founder in the southern city.
Massive security preparations have surrounded Saturday’s visit, with her party saying there were threats to target her wherever she goes.
The Karachi attacks happened just hours after Bhutto set foot on Pakistani soil for the first time since 1999 and shattered her planned triumphant return to contest the elections set for early January.
No group has claimed responsibility for the attacks, with Bhutto alleging a link to rogue elements in the establishment and a pro-Taliban militant denying involvement. — AFP
