Benazir Bhutto Assassinated

Read all about it here.

Ms Bhutto - the first woman PM in an Islamic state - was leaving an election rally in Rawalpindi when a gunman shot her in the neck and set off a bomb.

At least 20 other people died in the attack and several more were injured.

[...]

It was the second suicide attack against her in recent months and came amid a wave of bombings targeting security and government officials.

I'm not going to pretend that I've ever mistaken the woman for some sort of saint - Benazir Bhutto and her husband embezzled on a truly gigantic scale during her incompetent tenure in office - but the manner and timing of this murder give me serious cause for concern: how can a country in the grip of such religious insanity be allowed to possess nuclear weapons?

Oh, and to forestall the conspiracy theories, while I recognize that Pervez Musharraf has long been cynically exploiting the threat of Islamic extremism to hold back Western criticism of his hamfisted attempt at remaining in an office no one ever elected him to, the idea that anyone would engage in a suicide attack just to keep some general in power seems a tad bit too farfetched to me. The level of fanaticism and ideological commitment required to do something like this is such as the likes of Musharraf will never muster. To the extent that Pervez Musharraf can be faulted for Bhutto's murder, it is that he almost certainly skimped on Bhutto's protection, hoping that by so doing he would scare her off the campaign trail.

PS: The New York Times has a much more detailed account of events.