Thousands mourn in Pakistan a year after Bhutto's killing
GARHI KHUDA BAKHSH, Pakistan (Reuters) - Tens of thousands of supporters of former Pakistani prime minister Benazir Bhutto streamed into her home town on Saturday to mark the first anniversary of her assassination.
Bhutto, 54, was killed in a gun and bomb attack in the city of Rawalpindi as she emerged from an election rally just over two months after she had returned from years of self-exile.
In February, the two-time prime minister's Pakistan People's Party rode a wave of sympathy to win an election and it now heads a coalition government. Her widower, Asif Ali Zardari, has become president.
Zardari, in a statement marking the anniversary, said the attack on his wife was an attack on the viability of state and aimed at undermining efforts to build democratic structures and to fighting militancy.
"The tyrants and the killers have killed her but they shall never be able to kill her ideas that drove and inspired a generation to lofty aims," Zardari said.
The anniversary of the killing that shocked the country and sparked days of violence by her supporters, comes as Pakistan faces yet another crisis.
Tension has been rising with India over last month's militant attacks in the Indian city of Mumbai, raising fears of conflict between the nuclear-armed neighbours.
A year after her murder, many questions remain unanswered.
Investigations by Pakistan's previous government, British police and the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency accused an al Qaeda-linked militant of killing Bhutto, a staunch supporter of the U.S.-led campaign against Islamist militancy.
But many of Bhutto's supporters have expressed dissatisfaction over those investigations.
U.N. INQUIRY
The new government has asked for a U.N. commission of inquiry into the assassination and the United Nations said on Friday Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon hoped an inquiry could be set up in the near future.
Pakistan has said it wants the inquiry to identify "the culprits, perpetrators, organisers and financiers behind the assassination ... with a view to bringing them to justice."
Pakistan wants the proposed inquiry to be modelled on a U.N. investigation of the 2005 assassination of former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik al-Hariri. Although a court has been appointed to try indictees in that case, no suspects have been named.
Bhutto was buried at her family's ancestral graveyard in the village of Garhi Khuda Bakhsh, in Sindh province, next to her father, former prime minister Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, who was hanged in 1979 after being deposed in a military coup.
Her two brothers, Murtaza and Shahnawaz, who both died in unexplained circumstances, are also buried in the mausoleum she herself had ordered built.
Thousands of people milled about outside the mausoleum on Saturday, many carrying pictures of Bhutto. Zardari, other family members, and government leaders were due to pay their respects later in the day.
In 1988, aged just 35, the Harvard- and Oxford-educated Bhutto became the Muslim world's first democratically elected woman prime minister.
Deposed in 1990, she was re-elected in 1993 and ousted again in 1996, amid charges of corruption she said were politically motivated.
Bhutto escaped unhurt from a suicide attack hours after returning home on October 18 last year. Nearly 140 people were killed in the attack on her welcoming procession in Karachi.
She has spoken of al Qaeda plots to kill her. But she also had enemies in other quarters including among the powerful intelligence services.
(Writing by Robert Birsel; Editing by Valerie Lee)