Pakistan:Bhutto's ancestral home will now be the focus as preparations are made for the election, writes Mary Fitzgeraldin Karachi.
When news of Benazir Bhutto's assassination swept Karachi last week, everyone expected Lyari would be one of the first places to go up in flames.
This teeming slum of more than one million people has been a stronghold of Bhutto's Pakistan People's Party since the 1970s, when the PPP was led by her father.
The former prime minister's face is everywhere, from posters that curl from the walls of shacks to banners that dip into the putrid-smelling waste running through Lyari's rutted alleyways. The Bhutto name means a lot here. Most of those who died in the suicide bomb attack on her homecoming parade in October were from Lyari.
"No one can ever replace her," says Shiv, a shopkeeper who was born and lives in the area. "When people heard what happened, they just exploded with anger."
As in other pockets of Karachi, the signs of that rage are everywhere. Streets are dotted with the shells of burnt-out vehicles, and the roads in many parts are still littered with stones hurled by rioters.
Across Karachi, in the affluent seafront neighbourhood of Clifton, members of Bhutto's PPP gathered outside her city residence yesterday evening in preparation for the arrival of the main mourning party from the Bhutto ancestral home in rural Sindh.
Named after her eldest child, the fortress-like Bilawal House is expected to become the focus of intense party activity in the next week as the PPP gears up for elections scheduled for January 8th. Whether those elections actually go ahead as planned will be another test for Pakistan in what has proved one of the most turbulent periods of its 60-year history.
Shop windows that were not hurriedly shuttered have been smashed. "There were people on the streets shooting in the air or throwing stones. They set so many cars and buses on fire. It was very dangerous," Shiv says. Dodging the mobs and unable to take a bus, it took him more than an 1½ hours to get to his shop in a downtown Karachi hotel.
Yesterday the violence appeared to subside and many Karachites emerged from their homes in search of food and fuel. Petrol stations had been among the first businesses to close for fear of rioters and looters. Huge queues formed outside the handful that decided to open as the third official day of mourning drew to a close last night.
The port city - Pakistan's largest - experienced some of the worst violence following Bhutto's murder. The former prime minister died in hospital after she was targeted by a suicide bomber and gunman during an election rally in the city of Rawalpindi last Thursday.
At least 38 people were killed and dozens more wounded as Bhutto's supporters took to the streets of Pakistan's main cities and towns to protest the killing. In several areas, protesters fought running battles with riot police and torched hundreds of banks, shops, railway stations, offices, trains and vehicles. Paramilitary forces were deployed under shoot-to-kill orders.
Though tensions were noticeably lower yesterday, there is still considerable unease over what may come next. Even in a country where uncertainty has become something of a default setting, this feels different. Not even the news that Bhutto's teenage son Bilawal had been anointed her successor as party leader could quell the niggling sense of foreboding.
However, the circumstances of Bhutto's death remain a source of controversy and tension. Her husband has called for a UN-led investigation into the killing.
Pakistani television has broadcast pictures it claimed show the two individuals - a gunman and a suicide bomber - who carried out the attack. The images also appear to show that Ms Bhutto was inside her vehicle, and not standing through the sun roof, when the explosion occurred.
A government spokesman had earlier refuted claims that she was hit by bullets and instead said she was killed when the force of the bomb blast knocked her head against a sun roof fitting.
The PPP has insisted their leader was killed by two bullets.