Source: AFP

LARKANA, Pakistan (AFP) — After one of the bloodiest attacks in Pakistan in memory, opponents of President Pervez Musharraf hit the campaign trail Sunday with just two weeks to go before pivotal elections for parliament.

Main opposition leaders Benazir Bhutto and Nawaz Sharif were to hold rallies ahead of the January 8 vote, which both have said Musharraf’s allies will try to rig — and which Islamic militants have vowed to disrupt.

At least 56 people were killed in a suicide attack at a mosque on Friday that targetted Musharraf’s former interior minister Aftab Sherpao, who helped lead the government crackdown on militants.

Sherpao and the cabinet were relieved of their duties when Musharraf appointed a caretaker government ahead of the election, but he remains a central figure in the battle against Taliban and Al-Qaeda linked militants.

Musharraf, a close ally in the US-led “war on terror”, has vowed no let up in the fight against extremism.

But the latest attack — the worst since 139 people were killed at a Bhutto rally in October — has raised the spectre of a bloody run-up to the vote, with more than 750 people already dead in militant violence this year.

Bhutto has fiercely criticised Musharraf’s handling of the militants, charging that he has failed to stop the bloodshed despite imposing a six-week national state of emergency last month.

Musharraf announced an end to emergency rule one week ago, saying the measure had broken the back of the militant insurgency in this nuclear-armed Islamic nation of 160 million people.

“The wave of terrorism and militancy has been stopped under the emergency and there has been considerable improvement in the overall situation,” he said, claiming the emergency had saved the country from destabilisation.

But he is under both domestic and international pressure, even from his close backers in Washington, to ensure that the parliament elections are free and fair.

“The key here is that these elections move Pakistan forward on the democratic path,” US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said last week. “That’s the key.”

A recent New York Times poll in Pakistan found that two-thirds of Pakistanis want him to resign, however, and the paper said any victory by pro-Musharraf parties would be seen as evidence of mass vote-rigging.

Bhutto and Sharif, both former prime ministers, were hitting the campaign trail in southern Pakistan on Sunday.

Sharif was expected in the port city of Karachi, where he was to make an appearance at the tomb of Pakistan’s founding father, Muhammad Ali Jinnah, his spokesman told AFP.

The two-time prime minister will visit constituencies in Karachi and address people and workers, he said.

Bhutto is meanwhile due in the town of Naudero, her home constituency, in the district of Larkana in Sindh province, where she will meet her party supporters.

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Tags: Attack, Benazir Bhutto, Candidates, Elections, Militants, Musharraf, Sharif