1953-2007

Benazir Bhutto, the eldest child of former President of Pakistan Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto, was born on June 21, 1953, at Karachi.

In June 1973, she graduated from Harvard University with a degree in political science. After graduating, she joined Oxford University in the fall of 1973.

Bhutto returned to Pakistan in June 1977. She was nominated as the Prime Minister on Dec. 2, 1988. At the age of 35, she was the youngest and the first woman Prime Minister to lead a Muslim nation in modern age. She returned to power, by winning the October 1993 elections. Farooq Ahmad Khan Leghari dismissed her government in November 1996 on corruption charges.

Bhutto is President Pervez Musharraf's unlikely ally in the nation's political process of recent years, sometime combative, sometime conciliatory.

In 2007, a deal between Musharraf and her cleared the way for Bhutto to return home from exile in Britain and Dubai on the understanding that Musharraf would step down from his army job and then serve another five-year term as president while Bhutto would lead her Pakistan People's Party to parliamentary success in early 2008 and serve as Prime Minister. 

Bhutto also attempted to unite two key strands of the country's fragmented opposition by visiting deposed chief justice in his barricaded home Nov. 10 in the capital.

Bhutto, 54, died in a hospital Thursday evening after a suicide attack rocked her election rally at the Liaquat Bagh park in Rawalpindi, some 30 km south from Islamabad. It was the second suicide attack targeting Bhutto since she returned from eight years of self-imposed exile in October. The first struck a welcome-home rally, killing 139 people.

(Xinhua News Agency December 28, 2007)