Telegraph : Eye witness: 'We were showered with flesh'

Eye witness: 'We were showered with flesh'

By Victoria Schofield | October 22, 2007

It was just after midnight when the first explosion went off, with such force that I was blown out of my seat.

I had been dozing on the upper deck of Benazir Bhutto's open-air bus nine hours after it set off from Karachi's airport, images of the ecstatic crowds that had earlier greeted her in the heat of the day still flashing through my mind.

By now a half-moon was shining, but on the dimly lit streets the crowds roared with excitement as we approached.

Then came the bang. I opened my eyes to find I had been thrown to the floor, surrounded by a dozen others including some of Benazir's relatives, friends and party workers.

My first thought was that it had been an unusually large firework. But Benazir's cousin, just beside me, said: "No, that was a bomb." Our instinct was to get out of the vehicle but in the darkness another voice urged: "Wait, there could be another explosion."
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Within the same breath, as we lay huddled together, another, more deafening blast shook the bus and we were showered with what felt like heavy rose petals. Then I realised the chilling truth: they were flakes of human flesh.

Some 139 people among the crowd had been killed, it emerged over the next few hours. The bus was armour-plated but its left side was dented and a fire was raging.

A shard of glass hit the forehead of Makhdoom Fahim, the vice chairman of Benazir's Pakistan People's Party.

My first thought was for Benazir. Was she safe? She had gone down to the lower level to rest her swollen feet and to go over the speech she was due to make later. I knew she was on the bottom level of the bus, but where? And if she was safe, what did this mean for her political future?

As a personal friend I had followed her career for more than 30 years, since we were students at Oxford together. I had seen her both as political prisoner and as prime minister. Now her bid to lead her country again seemed to be in jeopardy before she had even started her election campaign.

A lift shaft at the end of the bus proved to be our way of escape, as party workers lowered us into the darkness below.

The first thing to confront me on the street was a dead policeman, one of the many thousands who had escorted us that day. Mangled metal and shards of glass were on the pavement, and a fire burned furiously to the left of our vehicle.

I asked the group of people standing around: "Where's Benazir, is she safe?"

"Yes," I heard from her former defence minister, Shaftab Miraini, who'd also escaped from the top deck. "She got away." From the crowd another voice said: "It was a suicide attack. I've just seen a head." Fearing the bus might explode, I ran until I found a car to take me to Benazir's home.

By the time I reached Bilawal House – named after her eldest child, now 19 – crowds had gathered outside. But the festive lights to greet her arrival seemed out of place. Inside, Benazir sat with family and colleagues, watching television pictures of the fire, the wrecked bus and the bodies being carried on stretchers to hospital.

"I am just so relieved that you are safe," she greeted me. "Come, sit."

As we talked and sipped tea, more people arrived – Benazir's cousins, her mother-in-law and others. She stood and greeted each of them warmly, expressing thanks that they were unharmed.

"A day of triumph has turned into tragedy," she said. There was no bitterness in her voice, but perhaps I detected a certain resignation that she knew what she was up against.

Our conversation turned to the day's security arrangements. How had a suicide bomber forced his way through the crowd? And what about the ominous dimming of the street lights, which had worried her even before the bombs went off?

Benazir said that she did not believe that her political opponents in the immigrant MQM party were responsible. But she knows that she has other enemies: the religious Right who have never accepted a woman leading a Muslim state; al-Qaeda and Taliban supporters who oppose her Western liberal ideals; rogue elements of the intelligence agencies with no heed for government policy.

And yes, she reminded us, she had received a "friendly" warning that she should not return because an attack would be made. "It was the human shield of the boys walking by the side of the bus who protected us," she said. "And the fact that it was armour-plated. Otherwise we might all have died."

She told how she had managed to escape. Sitting at the back of the lower deck when the first explosion came, "I ducked because my husband had always told me if anything happens to duck."

She had also recalled that attacks often come in twos or threes, so only after the second explosion did she escape to the security Jeep trailing her.

Next morning she was up early, sitting on a sofa in the drawing room she had not occupied for eight years, making telephone calls of thanks for the messages she had already received from across the country and the world. What about President Musharraf? "Yes, he has telephoned," she said.

Even her political rivals, Nawaz Sharif and Altaf Hussain, leader of the MQM, had expressed relief that she was safe.

But what to do next? As I know well, Benazir is a survivor. Publicly she has made clear that she will not forsake the role which she has always seen for herself, as a champion for Pakistan's impoverished people. Privately, she is frightened not for her own safety but for the survival of the democratic process in Pakistan.