Benazir Bhutto, former Prime Minister of Pakistan, has been assassinated.

Pakistan’s former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto was assassinated Thursday after addressing a large gathering of her supporters.

Bhutto died of a gunshot wound to the neck, the Pakistani Interior Ministry said. The attacker then blew himself up. The bomb attack killed at least 22 others, doctors said.

Video of the scene just moments before the explosion showed Bhutto stepping into a heavily guarded vehicle to leave the rally.

John Moore, a photographer for Getty Images, said Bhutto was standing through the sunroof of her vehicle, waving to supporters, when two shots rang out.

Bhutto fell back into the vehicle, and almost immediately a bomb blast rocked the scene, sending twisting metal and shrapnel into the crowd, he added.

Police sources told CNN the bomber, who was riding a motorcycle, blew himself up near Bhutto’s vehicle.

Bhutto was rushed to Rawalpindi General Hospital — less than two miles from the bombing scene — where doctors pronounced her dead.

Her body was removed from the hospital — carried above a crowd of supporters — late Thursday night, and a Pakistan Air Force plane is flying the body to Sukkur, accompanied by her husband and three children, said Pakistan People’s Party leader Sen. Safdar Abbasi.

Here is the CNN interview with John Moore who took the last photograph of Benazir Bhutto; it includes his photograph and footage of the assassination aftermath.



More coverage and video of the Benazir Bhutto assassination and aftermath from Pakistan TV.



Extensive coverage and videos, on CNN. Additional coverage on The New York Times.

From The New York Times obituary.

Benazir Bhutto, who was assassinated at age 54 on Thursday in the Pakistani city of Rawalpindi, spent three decades navigating the turbulent and often violent world of Pakistani politics, becoming in 1988 the first woman to be democratically elected to lead a modern Muslim country.

A deeply polarizing figure, the self-styled “daughter of Pakistan” was twice elected prime minister and twice expelled from office amid a swirl of corruption charges that ultimately propelled her into self-imposed exile in London, New York and Dubai for much of the past decade. She returned home only two months ago, defying threats to her life as she embarked on a bid for election to a third term in office, billing herself as a bulwark against Islamic extremism and a tribune of democracy.

The combined bombing and shooting attack that killed her as she left a political rally, standing through the open roof of her car to greet milling crowds of supporters, came as Ms. Bhutto staged a series of mass meetings across Pakistan. She did that despite her aides’ appeals for caution in the wake of a double suicide bombing that narrowly failed to kill her on the night of her return from exile in October. That attack, which killed more than 130 people, came as she drove from the airport in Karachi to her home on the city’s seafront, and provoked a characteristic response.

“We will continue to meet the public,” she said as she visited survivors of the bombings at a Karachi hospital. “We will not be deterred.”

When asked to explain the courage — or stubbornness, as some of her critics saw it — that she displayed at critical junctures in her political career, Ms. Bhutto often referred to the example she said had been set by her father, Zulfikar Ali Bhutto. He was a charismatic and often demagogic politician who was president and prime minister from 1971 to 1977, before being hanged in April 1979 on charges of having ordered the murder of a minor political opponent.

In a photograph dating from June, 1972, Benazir Bhutto is shown with her father, Pakistani president Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, as he shakes hands with Indian prime minister Indira Gandhi. Indian foreign minister Swaran Singh looks on.


Benazir Bhutto being sworn in as Prime Minister of Pakistan in 1988.

Violence ran like a thread through her family life, to an extent that caused her admirers to compare the Bhuttos, in the contribution they made to Pakistan’s political life, and in the price they paid for it, to the Kennedys — and her enemies, pointing to the Bhuttos’ bitter family feuds, to compare them to the Borgias. The younger of Ms. Bhutto’s two brothers, Shahnawaz, died mysteriously of poisoning in 1995, in an apartment owned by the Bhuttos in Cannes, France. French investigators said they suspected that a family feud over a multimillion-dollar inheritance from Zulfikar Bhutto was involved, but no charges were filed.

Ms. Bhutto’s other brother, Murtaza, who along with Shahnawaz founded a terrorist group that sought to topple General Zia, spent years in exile in Syria beginning in the 1980s. When Murtaza finally returned to Pakistan, in 1994, he quickly fell into a bitter dispute with Ms. Bhutto over the family’s political legacy — and, he told a reporter at the time, over the money he said his father had placed in a Swiss bank when he was prime minister. In 1996, Murtaza was gunned down outside his home in Karachi, and his widow, Ghinva, blamed Asif Ali Zardari, Ms. Bhutto’s husband. Ms. Bhutto’s Iranian-born mother, Nusrat, sided in the dispute with Murtaza, and was dismissed by Ms. Bhutto as the Peoples Party chairman. “I had no idea I had nourished a viper in my breast,” she said of her daughter at the time.

The obituary continues.

Here is full coverage of the Benazir Bhutto assassination from MSNBC.

The 2007 Kennedy Center Honors were presented on December 4 and aired on December 26.

CBS-TV will telecast the two-hour special beginning at 9 PM ET; the annual tribute was filmed Dec. 2 at the Kennedy Center’s Opera House. This year’s recipients included stage and screen star, comedian and playwright Steve Martin; pianist Leon Fleisher; singer Diana Ross (Tony winner for An Evening with Diana Ross); film director Martin Scorsese; and songwriter Brian Wilson.

In addition to Chenoweth, Irwin, Short and Redgrave, the broadcast will also feature appearances by Yolanda Adams, Steve Carell, Ciara, Francis Ford Coppola, Robert De Niro, Cameron Diaz, Art Garfunkel, Hootie and the Blowfish, Terrence Howard, Lyle Lovett, Yo-Yo Ma, Smokey Robinson, Earl Scruggs and “American Idol” winner Jordin Sparks.

In a previous statement Kennedy Center Chairman Stephen A. Schwarzman said, “With their extraordinary talent, creativity, and perseverance, the five 2007 Honorees have transformed the way we, as Americans, see, hear and feel the performing arts. We will forever be thankful for the great gift they have shared with us. Leon Fleisher is a consummate musician whose career is a moving testament to the life-affirming power of art; Steve Martin is a Renaissance comic whose talents wipe out the boundaries between artistic disciplines; Diana Ross’ singular, instantly recognizable voice has spread romance and joy throughout the world; Martin Scorsese is a visionary filmmaker and a fearless artist; and Brian Wilson led not only a spectacularly popular rock group but also an era-defining transformation of the sound of music.”

Read more about the awards and honorees on the Kennedy Center Web site.

Coverage of the 2007 Kennedy Honors Awards from the Jack Diamond Morning Show.

Cincinnati’s Nick and Team Lachey were the “Clash of the Choirs” winners. Here is their performance of Louis Armstrong’s “What a Wonderful World” in the program finale.



Finalists Team LaBelle and Team Lachey await the announcement of the winner.



Read more about the competition on TV Grapevine.