The final hours of Benazir Bhutto: A warning ignored and a tragedy foretold
In short: On 27 December 2007, Benazir Bhutto was warned by Pakistan’s intelligence agency that suicide bombers would target her Rawalpindi rally. Despite the explicit threat, the former prime minister insisted the state provide protection. Hours later, she was dead, leaving behind a legacy defined by political turmoil and disputed causes of death.
At 1 a.m. on 27 December 2007, Lieutenant General Nadeem Taj of Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) visited Benazir Bhutto at her Islamabad home. He warned her that suicide bombers intended to attack her during an upcoming election rally in Rawalpindi. Bhutto, skeptical of the warning’s intent, demanded the state bolster her security rather than cancel the event. By midday, she traveled to the rally, where she addressed a crowd of 10,000, invoking the memory of her father, Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, who had been hanged after being ousted in a military coup.
As she departed the rally in a bulletproof vehicle, Bhutto stood through the emergency hatch to wave at supporters. A gunman, later identified as a fifteen-year-old named Bilal, fired three shots at her head before detonating a suicide bomb. The blast killed more than 20 people and wounded 100 others. Her security chief, Rehman Malik, was criticized for his inconsistent accounts of his whereabouts during the attack, and the lack of a backup vehicle left her vulnerable. She was rushed to Rawalpindi General Hospital, where she was pronounced dead at 18:16 local time.
The official cause of her death remains a point of intense contention. The Pakistani Interior Ministry initially claimed she died from a skull fracture caused by the explosion’s force hitting her head against the vehicle's sunroof, a narrative her aides rejected in favor of gunshot wounds. A Scotland Yard investigation later supported the explosion-related head injury theory, while the Pakistan People's Party maintained she was killed by gunfire. This debate has been viewed by some as an attempt to shape her legacy, with the distinction between martyrdom by bullet versus blast carrying significant political weight.
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Sources
- Summary by Intellect · source: The Assassination of Benazir Bhutto - Yale University Press
- Also: Pakistani politician Benazir Bhutto assassinated | December 27, 2007 | HISTORY
- Also: Assassination of Benazir Bhutto
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