Pakistan Reports: Bhutto's homeland smolders with rage

By ASHRAF KHAN, Associated Press Write

ALONG THE LARKANA-KARACHI HIGHWAY - Three days after Benazir Bhutto's killing, driving through her home province is a perilous experience. Charred vehicles, felled trees and rocks litter the highway, and nervous travelers paste her portrait to their cars to appease prowling mobs.

"Long live Bhutto!" one motorist shouted to a gang armed with stones and pieces of wood manning a roadblock.

After a brief discussion, he was allowed to continue on his way.

Bhutto's killing in a gun and suicide bomb attack on Thursday plunged Pakistan deeper into political crisis and triggered an orgy of violence that has killed more than 40 people and left hundreds of banks, shops, gasoline stations, railway stations and offices torched.

Sindh, an agricultural region in the south of the country where Bhutto grew up, has seen the worst of the unrest.

An Associated Press reporter who took the 280-mile highway that connects Larkana, Bhutto's hometown, and Karachi, Pakistan's largest city, on Saturday saw just a dozen cars and one truck traveling on it. Scores of smoldering vehicles lay beside the road.

In one attack near Larkana, unidentified assailants opened fire on a motorcade of Bhutto's supporters as they headed back to Karachi after her funeral, killing one man and wounding two others, said Waqar Mehdi, a spokesman for Bhutto's party.

Along the normally bustling highway, hundreds of truckers with loads of coal, rice and sand were stranded at small motels or by the roadside, too scared to continue their journey. Long lines formed at the few gasoline stations bold enough to open. READ MORE

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