Benazir Bhutto ( June 21, 1953 – December 27, 2007) was a Pakistani politician who chaired the Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP), a centre-left political party in Pakistan affiliated to the Socialist International. Bhutto was the first woman elected to lead a Muslim state, having been twice elected Prime Minister of Pakistan.
She was sworn in for the first time in 1988 but removed from office 20 months later under orders of then-president Ghulam Ishaq Khan on grounds of alleged corruption. In 1993 Bhutto was re-elected but was again removed in 1996 on similar charges, this time by President Farooq Leghari.Bhutto went into self-imposed exile in Dubai in 1998, where she remained until she returned to Pakistan on 18 October 2007, after reaching an understanding with President Musharraf by which she was granted amnesty and all corruption charges were withdrawn.She was the eldest child of former prime minister Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, a Pakistani of Sindhi descent, and Begum Nusrat Bhutto, a Pakistani of Iranian-Kurdish descent. Her paternal grandfather was Sir Shah Nawaz Bhutto, who came to Larkana Sindh before partition from his native town of Bhatto Kalan, which was situated in the Indian state of Haryana.She was assassinated on 27 December 2007, in a combined suicide bomb attack and shooting during a political rally of the Pakistan Peoples Party in the Liaquat National Bagh in Rawalpindi.
Ex-government spokesman Tariq Azim Khan said that, although it appeared that she had been shot, it was unclear whether her wounds had been caused by a shooting or shrapnel from the bomb. Eyewitnesses to the assassination stated to various news agencies that Ms. Bhutto had stood up through the sunroof of her Landcruiser to wave at supporters who were cheering her. It is then that a "thin man" on a motorcycle shot her in the neck with an AK-47 rifle. After this, he proceeded to detonate an explosive which resulted in the deaths of himself and at least 16 of her supporters, while many others were injured. Bhutto was rushed to Rawalpindi General Hospital where she died at 6:16 p.m. PST (1316 UTC). The gunshot to the neck was reported as the cause of death, according to the Pakistani Interior Ministry.
