Islamabad, Dec 30 (DPA) A Pakistani television station released footage early Sunday claiming that opposition leader Benazir Bhutto was shot dead by an assassin before an accomplice detonated a suicide bomb, contrary to official government claims.
The new, exclusive images from the Pakistani-based DawnNews TV show a young gunman, wearing sunglasses and dressed in a light-brown sports jacket, firing at Bhutto as she stood atop the sunroof of her white security Range Rover following an election campaign rally in the city of Rawalpindi Thursday.
The footage clearly shows Bhutto collapsing into her armoured-vehicle before the suicide blast, contradicting official government claims that she recoiled only after the blast and cracked her skull on the sunroof.
The government’s official version, which included only partial footage of the attack, has been met with widespread derision. Bhutto’s senior aides inside the vehicle are adamant that she was shot.
On Saturday night, Pakistan Interior Ministry officials again had insisted that Bhutto died after cracking her skull off a lever of the vehicle’s sunroof following recoil from the bomb blast.