By DPA
Islamabad : Thousands of demonstrators Sunday held rallies across southern Pakistan for the third consecutive day to protest the killing of 140 people in a suicide attack on the ex-premier and opposition leader Benazir Bhutto in Karachi.
Most of the business centres, markets and fuel stations were closed in the southern province of Sindh, a stronghold of Bhutto’s Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP), while in some cities angry protesters blocked roads, forcing traffic to remain off the road.
Police in Hyderabad, some 150 km northeast of the provincial capital Karachi, booked two dozens stick-wielding PPP workers who were trying to force shopkeepers to close down shops.
Otherwise, in the remaining areas the strike was observed voluntarily in response to Bhutto’s call for three days of mourning, starting from Friday.
In her first public appearance since the deadly attack, Bhutto expressed solidarity with more than a hundred injured bombing victims in Karachi’s Jinnah hospital Sunday. For security reasons the visit was kept completely secret.
“It was an act of sabotage,” she told reporters as dozens of heavily armed supporters and policemen guarded her. “We will serve the nation while combating terrorism,” she added.
Bhutto demanded that foolproof security be provided to all political leaders, especially those from the opposition.
More than 500 people were wounded in the two explosions that ripped through a procession Bhutto was leading after she arrived from Dubai, ending an eight-year, self-imposed exile Thursday.
Police suspect the first blast was caused by a hand grenade that a suicide bomber threw in the crowd before blowing himself up in the second blast.
A picture of the head of a suspected attacker has been released though there has been no major breakthrough in the investigation, a police official said on condition of anonymity.
Resentment has also grown in other parts of the country. Hundreds of people chanted slogans against the so far unknown culprits and in support of Bhutto after attending the funeral of a victim in Mach town, some 50 km east of the provincial capital Quetta in Balochistan.
In several cities of central Punjab province people attended funerals for the 140 killed in the attack, for which no one has so far taken responsibility.
Bhutto and her party seem confused over who should be blamed for the attack. Sometimes she points the finger at Islamic militants who are enraged over her support for the US and her alliance with President General Pervez Musharraf, a key American ally in the war against terrorism.
In the same breath she accuses “some elements” within the government of Musharraf, who earlier this month granted Bhutto an amnesty on the corruption charges she faced as part of a US backed power-sharing deal and allowed her to return home to participate in forthcoming general elections.