(Xinhua)
Updated: 2007-12-28 00:29

ISLAMABAD -- Former Pakistani Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto died Thursday evening after being seriously injured in a bomb attack near the capital city of Islamabad, the official APP news agency quoted interior ministry sources as saying.

Bhutto, 54, died in a hospital after a suicide attack rocked her election rally at the Liaquat Bagh park in Rawalpindi, some 30 km south from Islamabad.

It was the second suicide attack targeting Bhutto since she returned from eight years of self-imposed exile in October. The first struck a welcome-home rally, killing 139 people.

Bhutto was sworn in as prime minister of Pakistan in December 1988, becoming the first woman to head the government of the Islamic State. Bhutto's father, also a prime minister, was hanged by the military in 1979.

In the preceding decade of political struggle, Bhutto was arrested on numerous occasions; in all she spent nearly six years either in prison or under detention for her leadership of the then opposition Pakistan People's Party (PPP).

In May, 1986, Bhutto was appointed by the PPP Central Committee as co-chairperson.

Her government was dismissed in 1990 amid corruption allegations.

Although re-elected in 1993, she was thrown out again three years later by then president, Farooq Leghari, on further graft charges.

Bhutto went into exile in April 1999.

Bhutto was born in Karachi in 1953 as the oldest of four children of a  Westernized father and an Iranian Shiite mother. After completing her early education in Pakistan, she attended Radcliffe College and Oxford University. Obtaining degrees in philosophy, politics and economics, she also completed a course in international law and diplomacy at Oxford.