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Pakistan police say bomber's head found

Other News Materials 19 October 2007 22:48 (UTC +04:00)

Pakistani police said Friday they had the head of the man who may have carried out the bomb attack that killed 136 people at the homecoming of former prime minister Benazir Bhutto.

Forensic analysts were examining the body part and police said they were due to release a sketch. Authorities are offering about $83,000 (5 million rupees) for information leading to possible arrests.

Bhutto was traveling from the airport after returning to Pakistan at the end of eight years in self-imposed exile when the bomber struck her convoy late Thursday. She and others in her group were unhurt.

A defiant Bhutto Friday said she did not blame the government for the attack but complained of poor security preparations. The former prime minister blamed extremists who oppose her support for Pakistan's Western allies.

Speaking at a news conference in Karachi on Friday, Bhutto said the street where Thursday's bombing took place was darkened because lights had been turned off, making security difficult to enforce.

She said she was demanding an urgent inquiry into why the street lights had been turned off.

"I'm not accusing the government but certain individuals who abuse their positions and powers," she said.

"We were scanning the crowd with the floodlights, but it was difficult to scan the crowds because there was so much darkness."

Bhutto said two attackers were behind the bombing, and that her security guards found a third man armed with a pistol and another with a suicide vest.

Bhutto said threats were made against her by "certain people who have gained a lot through dictatorship. They have presided over the rise of extremism, they have created safe havens in the tribal areas of Pakistan for the Taliban and other militants and they fear my return."

CNN Correspondent Dan Rivers said Bhutto in her speech listed three other groups, in addition to the Taliban in Pakistan, that she believed posed the most danger to her and her cause: al Qaeda, the Taliban in Afghanistan and a suicide team from Karachi that she did not describe.

She and others in her group were unhurt. It was her first day back in Pakistan since her eight years of self-imposed exile. ( CNN )

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