Terrorists used a baby in Benazir murder attempt

Calcutta News.Net
Sunday 3rd February, 2008

Terrorists used a baby strapped with bombs in the first assassination attempt on former Pakistani prime minister Benazir Bhutto.

In a posthumous autobiography, Benazir has revealed the incident occurred the day she returned home last year after self-imposed exile.

In the book, excerpted in the Sunday Times, she gave an account of the bomb blast that ripped through her motorcade on October the 18th in Islamabad.

In the book she noted that during the motorcade, she saw a man holding up a baby dressed in the colours of her PPP party.

After gesticulating repeatedly for her to take the baby, which was about one or two years old, she directed the crowd to let the man through.

But when the crowd parted, the man would not come forward.

Instead he tried to hand the baby to someone in the crowd.

The man finally came forward but, by then, she had retreated to the interior of her vehicle.

She said an MP from her party, Agha Siraj Durrani, turned away the man who tried to hand the baby up.

The man then went to a police vehicle to the left of the truck, which also refused to take the baby.

He then moved to the police vehicle in front of the first, which is when the first explosion took place.

Everyone in the police van was killed, as were those around it.

Although Ms Bhutto narrowly escaped being assassinated, 140 people were killed in the bombing.

She was killed in an attack at another public rally on December 27th.

The Benazir Bhutto autobiography will be published in mid-February.

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