Benazir Bhutto was laid to rest next to her father in the family mausoleum today after the opposition leader's assassination plunged Pakistan into crisis and triggered violent protests across her native Sindh province.
Protesters burn tyres on a street in Rawalpindi city
Tens of thousands of mourners wept and beat their heads as Ms Bhutto, killed by a suicide attacker at an election rally yesterday, was carried from her ancestral home in Sindh, in the south of the country, to the domed mausoleum.
The death of the 54-year-old Ms Bhutto stoked fears that a January 8th election meant to return Pakistan to civilian rule could be put off amid a backlash that threatened to engulf the embattled President Pervez Musharraf.
Tonight Pakistani authorities claimed they had intercepted an al-Qaeda phone on the Bhutto bombing and that they had "irrefutable" proof that Islamists were behind the attack.
Earlier her husband, Asif Ali Zardari, wept as he accompanied the closed coffin, draped with the green, red and black tricolour of Ms Bhutto's Pakistan People's Party, on the seven kilometre journey to the tomb in the dusty village of Garhi Khuda Bakhsh.
He then prayed at the tomb with the couple's three children, son Bilawal (19) and daughters Bakhtawar (17) and Aseefa (14).
Many mourners chanted slogans against Mr Musharraf and the United States, which has long backed the former army general in the hope he can maintain stability in the nuclear-armed country racked by Islamist violent.
"Shame on the killer Musharraf, shame on the killer US," mourners cried. Others wept in despair. "Bhutto was my sister and Bhutto was like my mother," cried farmer Imam Baksh.
"With her death, the world has ended for us." Mr Musharraf, who seized power in a military coup in 1999 but left the army last month to become a civilian president, has appealed for calm and blamed Islamist militants for the killing.
But many accused him of failing to protect Ms Bhutto, who died in the garrison city of Rawalpindi, home of the Pakistani army.
In Sindh, where Ms Bhutto had huge popular support, particularly among the rural poor, officials said 24 people, including four policemen, were killed in protests.
"We're anticipating the situation might get worse after the funeral," Sindh Interior Minister Akhtar Zaman said.
World leaders urged Pakistan to stay the course towards democracy, as Bhutto's death rattled markets and triggered a flight to less risky assets such as bonds and gold.
"Unrest in Pakistan is eroding the market sentiment dramatically as Pakistan, unlike North Korea or Iran, is known to really have nuclear weapons," said Koichi Ogawa, chief portfolio manager at Daiwa SB Investments.
In Sindh, authorities issued an order to shoot violent protesters on sight. Hundreds of cars, trucks and buses smouldered in the interior of the province and crowds of men set up road blocks and chanted slogans against Mr Musharraf.
Meanwhile, a blast at an election meeting in Pakistan's troubled northwest killed six people including a candidate for the party that supports Mr Musharraf, police said.
There were also sporadic protests elsewhere in the country and one person was killed in the eastern city of Lahore. Bhutto returned home from self-imposed exile in October, hoping to become prime minister for a third time.
But as she left the election rally she stood to wave to supporters from the sun-roof of her bullet-proof car. An attacker shot at her before blowing himself up, police and witnesses said. She was killed by bullets to the head and neck.
"The shooter was either very well trained or he was very close so he could hit her in the temple and neck," a security official said. She was buried alongside her father, former Prime Minister Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, who was hanged in 1979 after being deposed by a military coup. Her two brothers, Murtaza and Shahnawaz, who both died in unexplained circumstances, are also buried in the mausoleum she herself had ordered to be built.
The United States, which relies on Pakistan as an ally against al-Qaeda and the Taliban in neighbouring Afghanistan, had championed the Harvard- and Oxford-educated Ms Bhutto.
Her death dashed US hopes of a power-sharing agreement between her and Mr Musharraf. President George W. Bush condemned "this cowardly act by murderous extremists" and urged Pakistanis to honour Bhutto's memory by going ahead with the election. "Elections stand as they were announced," Prime Minister Mohammadmian Soomro told reporters.
But analysts said the assassination, which followed a wave of suicide attacks and the worsening of an Islamist insurgency, could make this impossible.