Benazir for outside help to probe blast

Former Pakistani premier Benazir Bhutto called for international help Sunday with police investigations into last week's bomb blasts that killed 139 people in Karachi.
"We want the government of Pakistan to seek the assistance of the international community," she told foreign reporters including AFP.
"They have anti-terrorism experts who have the technical expertise to investigate attacks of this nature," she said.
Pakistani police were questioning three people on Sunday over an attack on former premier Benazir Bhutto's homecoming procession that killed 139 people, an investigator said.
The men were linked to a car from which an attacker threw a grenade in Karachi on Thursday night, seconds before a suicide bomber blew himself up in a crowd of hundreds of thousands of people, he said.
Investigators also quizzed seven militants in jails in Karachi for possible information on the blasts, added the police official, who has investigated several other attacks in the city.
"Police have taken three people from the south of Punjab province for questioning. They were taken to Karachi for questioning and it can be that they hold clues," the official told AFP on condition of anonymity.
"They were picked up in connection with a suspect vehicle from which one of the attackers is believed to have thrown the grenade," he said.
Several hundred protesters burned tyres in the streets on Saturday and pelted passing vehicles with stones for a second day in pro-Bhutto neighbourhoods, AFP photographers said.
Pakistani authorities were earlier probing a list of three possible suspects that Benazir Bhutto sent to President Pervez Musharraf.
The 54-year-old has blamed militants for the attack and said she did not believe that the "state or government" were involved, but sources in her party said the list included senior army officials, without elaborating.
Earlier Benazir on Sunday visited a Karachi hospital to offer support to some of those wounded in a deadly suicide attack on her homecoming parade, an AFP correspondent said.
About 100 supporters cheered Benazir Bhutto -- who was making her first public appearance in the streets of Karachi since Thursday night's bombings that killed 139 people -- as she left Jinnah Hospital here.
Flanked by heavy security carrying automatic weapons, Benazir Bhutto waved to supporters before getting into a four-wheel drive vehicle at the entrance of the hospital, where many of the badly wounded were taken after the blasts.
Wearing a bright yellow tunic, matching trousers and a white headscarf, Benazir Bhutto waved again on the step of the car before she was whisked away without making any public statement.
About 10 paramilitary officers also stood guard.
A suicide blast ripped through Benazir Bhutto's homecoming parade Thursday on the streets of Karachi where hundreds of thousands of supporters had gathered to cheer her return from eight years in self-imposed exile.
Some 400 people were injured by the shrapnel-packed bomb that caused devastation over a wide area. A grenade was thrown into the crowd seconds before the larger blast.
Benazir Bhutto has since held a press conference at which she pledged to stay in Pakistan to combat militancy and fight general elections in January, seen as a key step to returning the country of some 160 million people to civilian rule.
But her hospital visit Sunday was her first appearance outside of her heavily guarded home since the blast.
The attack on her motorcade has cast doubt over her previous plans to tour the country to whip up support ahead of the polls.
The explosions on Thursday came hours after Bhutto shrugged off militant threats to set foot on Pakistani soil for the first time since 1999.
Benazir Bhutto had returned from self-imposed exile after President Pervez Musharraf dropped corruption charges against her in the hope her popularity could shore up his grip on power.
She had mostly worked out a power-sharing deal with him, but his re-election as president earlier this month is now being challenged in the courts, as is the graft amnesty.