(China Daily)
Updated: 2007-10-24 07:24

Benazir Bhutto yesterday received a new death threat, her lawyer said, as a top official revealed there were apparently two suicide bombers behind last week's bloody assassination attempt.

Senator Farooq Naik, Bhutto's lawyer, said he had received a two-page handwritten letter in the Urdu language from an unidentified person threatening to kill her "by any means". The writer claimed to be a friend of al-Qaida, Osama bin Laden and extremists in Pakistan.

The authenticity of the letter could not be confirmed, but Naik said the party was taking it seriously. He said he asked the chief justice of Pakistan to get the government to investigate the threat and protect her.

"After the October 18 incident, we cannot take anything lightly," he said.

Bhutto's homecoming from an eight-year exile was shattered by a bombing last Thursday that hit her caravan as she traveled through Karachi. She escaped injury, but 139 other people were killed.

Sindh provincial Governor Ishrat Ul-Ebad Khan said people in custody in connection with seven previous suicide attacks in Karachi were being questioned in prisons in the city and elsewhere in Pakistan in the hope they can provide clues into last Thursday's bombing.

Police had initially said only one suicide bomber participated in the attack, but Khan said "it was more than likely" there were two, after pieces of a second severed head were found at a hospital and at the site of the attack.

He said the state agency that oversees Pakistan's national identity cards was helping to try and identify the bombers - one of whose pictures has been made public.

Although no arrests have been made, Khan said the investigation was progressing. He rebutted earlier reports that three men had been detained in connection with a vehicle used by an attacker.

Bhutto's spokeswoman reiterated a call for the chief investigator to be replaced.

She has already called for Pakistan to seek expert help from the US and Britain in the probe.

"Benazir Bhutto is not satisfied with the investigation, comments made by some elements of the government blaming (Bhutto's Pakistan People's Party) are increasing her concerns," spokeswoman Sherry Rehman said.

Bhutto escaped unhurt from the bombing that targeted her heavily guarded convoy in the southern city of Karachi around midnight, about ten hours after she returned to Pakistan from an eight-year, self-imposed exile.

Bhutto claims that streetlights had been deliberately extinguished on her route to conceal the attacker - a claim that Khan said would be investigated although he said TV footage of the incident showed lights were on.

Bhutto also claims extremist elements in the government and the security apparatus are trying to kill her.

She alleges they include remnants of the regime of former military leader General Zia-ul Haq, under whose government her father Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto, who also served as prime minister, was executed for allegedly conspiring to kill a politician.

Venomous exchanges have erupted between Benazir Bhutto and the ruling party, with each accusing each other over the bombing - stretching the possibility that the two parties could form a coalition in support of President General Pervez Musharraf after January parliamentary elections.

Agencies

(China Daily 10/24/2007 page8)