British detectives investigating the assassination of Pakistani opposition leader and former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto, have concluded that Pakistani she died after cracking her skull on the hatch of her vehicle during a December 27 attack.
Television footage released shortly after her death appeared to show a gunman aiming at Ms Bhutto and it appeared that her head jerked backwards, sparking claims that she had been shot.
Bhutto’s party immediately rejected the findings, saying it still believed the two-time former premier was slain by an assassin’s bullet and reiterating calls for a UN inquiry into the killing.
The report by Scotland Yard investigators concluded she died after hitting her head as the force of the blast threw her.
According to the British report, the only injury to Bhutto was major trauma to the right side of her head, which investigators ruled out as being from a gunshot wound, Majeed said.
They also determined that the attack was carried out by a single person who blew himself up after opening fire, not by two as authorities had originally reported.
President Pervez Musharraf’s critics, many of whom suspect a broad conspiracy, have been highly skeptical of his theory, which makes light the government’s responsibility for a security breach that allowed the gunman to get close to Bhutto.
A 15-year-old boy was arrested in Pakistan’s North West Frontier Province in connection with Ms Bhutto’s death last month.