Qaeda Linked to Karachi Attack

Hours after surviving a suicide bombing that killed up to 136 of her supporters and maimed more than 250 others, a defiant Benazir Bhutto said today that death threats would not deter her from the quest to bring civilian rule to Pakistan.

Both she and Pakistani authorities blamed Islamic militants for the attack, although accounts of the night’s chaotic events provided by police and by Bhutto and her associates differed on several key points.

Police said the initial investigation pointed to the attack being the work of a single assailant, who first threw a grenade toward the vehicle carrying Bhutto and dozens of party members in a midnight procession through the streets of Karachi, then blew himself up in a thunderous blast a few feet from her steel-fortified vehicle.

Bhutto, however, told a news conference that there had been at least two assailants, and that shots had been fired in an attempt to disable the vehicle in which she was riding.