Bhutto killed by bomb, not bullet: report
Updated: 2008-02-09 17:02
ISLAMABAD - Scotland Yard said Friday that Pakistani former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto was killed in a bomb blast, not gunshot.
 A TV grab taken from footage released by the Pakistan Interior Ministry on December 28, 2007 shows former Pakistan prime minister Benazir Bhutto moments before she died following a rally in Rawalpindi. [Agencies]
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The Scotland Yard team described what the team had done in the inquiry and concluded that there was no gunshot injury on Benazir Bhutto. She died of severe head injuries as a result of the bomb blast, said the report.
"Ms Bhutto's injury is entirely consistent with her head impacting upon the lip of the escape hatch," the report said, adding "the blast caused a violent collision between her head and the escape hatch area of the vehicle, causing a severe and fatal head injury."
Some local media reported that there were two individuals directly involved in the attack.
However, the report clarified that there was only one attacker, saying "all the available evidence points toward the person who fired shots and the person who detonated the explosives being one and the same person."
The report said that the bombing suspect was within one to two meters of Benazir Bhutto's vehicle towards it rear and there was no person or other obstruction between him and the vehicle.
Addressing a news conference in the garrison city of Rawalpindi, the Additional Inspector of General Crime Investigation Department Abdul Majeed said that the primary focus of the Scotland Yard team, which comprised 11 members, was to determine the cause of Bhutto's death.
The police arrested a suspect who helped the suicide bomber, Abdul Majeed said, adding that intelligence agencies provided useful information to the probe.
However, the People's Party rejected the Scotland Yard report and still believed that Bhutto was killed by a gunshot, local TV channel DAWN NEWS reported.
Benazir Bhutto was moving out of a park in Rawalpindi where she addressed an election rally on December 27 last year, when an attacker fired shots and blew himself up just a few paces away from Bhutto's vehicle. Bhutto was injured in the attack and declared dead after being shifted to a local hospital.
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