A 15-year-old detained near the Afghan border has confessed to joining a team of assassins sent to kill Benazir-Bhutto, officials said on Saturday.Police also announced they had foiled new suicide attacks against the country's Shiite-minority.
In the southern city of Karachi, meanwhile, the police chief said officers detained five men with explosives, detonators and a small quantity of cyanide intended for attacks on this week's Shiite Muslim festival of Ashura.
Via Time-Magazine
India's stock market dipped slightly the morning after the killing with investors concerned about instability in the region. By the afternoon, it had resumed its climb.India put its troops on a higher state of alert after the emergency was declared and again after the Bhutto-killing.
"The general confidence level in India is much higher," said C. Uday Bhaskar, a prominent New Delhi-based defense analyst.A continuing peace process between India and Pakistan since 2004 also done much to reduce India's anxiety over the possibility of a Pakistani attack.
"Our greatest fear is the large scale movement of terrorist activities through Pakistan," said retired Gen. Ashok Mehta, a strategic analyst in New Delhi.In an attempt to strengthen democracy and stability in Afghanistan, India has donated some $750 million to reconstruction efforts since the Taleban fell, according to the Indian Ministry of External Affairs, making it the third-largest donor.
Newly-appointed chairperson of the Pakistan Peoples Party Bilawal Bhutto Zardari, the son of slain former premier Benazir-Bhutto watches his father Asif Ali Zardari (L) speak during a press conference in Naudero, 30 December.
The son of slain Pakistan opposition leader Benazir Bhutto was chosen to take the mantle of her party and immediately vowed to keep up what he called her struggle for democracy. At an emotional news conference where his father was named co-chair of the Pakistan Peoples Party, the 19-year-old Bilawal Bhutto, an Oxford-University student untested in politics, said he was ready to lead.
> AFP/Getty Images
"Most of those documents are fabricated ... and the stories that have been spun around them are absolutely wrong."
Was said in: Bhutto's son, husband to succeed her
After a look at recent NewsHour interviews with Benazir Bhutto, Pakistan experts and former colleagues of the late prime minister reflect on her political career, including her election as the first female prime-minister in 1988.
> Benazir Bhutto - Experts Reflect - Part one
After a look at recent NewsHour interviews with Benazir Bhutto, Pakistan experts and former colleagues of the late prime minister reflect on her political career, including her election as the first female prime-minister in 1988.
> Benazir Bhutto - Experts Reflect - Part two
Pakistan Peoples Party information secretary Sherry-Rehman, who was riding in the car behind Bhutto's when it was attacked, called the government's conclusion that Bhutto was not shot "the most bizarre-nonsense."
Like the Nehru-Gandhi family in India, the Bhuttos of Pakistan are one of the world's most famous political dynasties. Benazir's father, Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, was prime minister of Pakistan in the early 1970s.Born in 1953 in the province of Sindh and educated at Harvard and Oxford, Ms Bhutto gained credibility from her father's high profile, even though she was a reluctant convert to politics. During both her stints in power, the role of Ms Bhutto's husband, Asif Zardari, proved highly controversial.
