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Benazir Bhutto's voice was hoarse with the rigours of the campaign trail as she addressed the rally in Rawalpindi. The crowd was sparse, perhaps 4,000 supporters, who filled less than half the venue, a park in the city centre.

Perhaps it was the fear of terrorism that kept people away. Perhaps it was having to listen to a dozen other speakers first, mostly local officials of her Pakistan People's Party. When she spoke, it was some three hours later than scheduled. The crowd tried to rouse itself as she came to the podium, on a stage perched several metres up. Her speech was standard stump fare. There was no roar from her supporters but they cheered as she finished.

By the time Ms. Bhutto left the stage, security agents around the park, which had earlier in the day patrolled all entrances, had melted away. She climbed down the stairs and into a waiting white armour-plated SUV.

The vehicle had only just made it out of the park where, seeing fans lined up outside, she could not resist waving to them one more time. The sunroof opened and she stood up, her upper body emerging from the top of the vehicle. The assassin saw his chance.

Shots rang out. She slumped back in the vehicle. She fell to one side, just as there was a huge explosion. Blood poured from her head. She never regained consciousness.

Her death sent the unruly country deeper into chaos, sparking waves of violence and jeopardizing the January election aimed at restoring a civilian, democratic government after more than eight years of military dictatorship.

Eyewitnesses said Ms. Bhutto's bodyguards jumped the shooter, who then detonated explosives, shredding those around him. There were other reports that a sniper shot her from a nearby building shortly before the suicide bomber struck. Ambulance crews collected pieces of flesh from the scene. The road was turned red with pools of blood.

Between three and five shots were fired. Ms. Bhutto was hit in the neck.

“I am 70, but today I feel like an orphan,” Saqib Hussain said as he shed tears in the emergency ward of Rawalpindi General Hospital, where Ms. Bhutto was pronounced dead after surgeons tried to save her.

Liaquat Bagh park, the venue for the Rawalpindi rally, has a grim history. It was the site where Liaquat Ali Khan, Pakistan's first prime minister, was assassinated in 1951.

Just a couple of kilometres away in Rawalpindi, which houses the headquarters of the Pakistan army, Ms. Bhutto's father Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, Pakistan's first democratically elected prime minister, was executed in 1979 by a previous military regime when she was 26.

Ms. Bhutto's party has repeatedly complained that the government of President Pervez Musharraf was providing inadequate security.

On Oct. 18 she had narrowly escaped another assassination attempt, at her homecoming parade in Karachi, which left 140 dead.

The death toll from the attack yesterday stood at 20.

“They killed her father. They killed her two brothers. It is a national tragedy,” Safraz Khan said at the hospital. “She was the force to unite Pakistan.”

Her supporters pushed their way into the ward as hundreds of angry people wept and shouted in the corridors, fighting for space.

They chanted “Musharraf is a dog” and “Musharraf murderer.”

Outside in the streets of Rawalpindi, youths lit fires at intersections. Traffic was stopped, cars vandalized. Electricity was cut, plunging the city into darkness. No police were visible in the hospital or the streets.

The scenes were repeated in major cities across Pakistan. In Karachi, young supporters went on the rampage, shooting randomly at passing cars.

The crowd at the hospital seemed sure that the army, Mr. Musharraf, and the “establishment” were behind the attack.

Ms. Bhutto herself made similar allegations after the October attack. Security experts believe that al-Qaeda and Taliban militants were the most likely perpetrators of both strikes.

“GHQ [general headquarters of the army] killed her,” Sardar Saleem, a former member of parliament, said at the hospital.

Makhdoom Amin Fahim, deputy leader of the PPP, announced 40 days of mourning, saying simply: “We are shattered.”

Ms. Bhutto was head of the party, and without her there aren't any other popular figures to lead it.

It was also the only major liberal political force in the country, stridently opposed to religious extremism. Washington had backed her strongly as the next prime minister, a post she had already held twice before and looked likely to win again if the election was fair.

“She is my leader. She's my sister. She is the voice of the oppressed people of Pakistan,” party activist Iktidar Ali said.

Ms. Bhutto knew the risks she was taking by openly campaigning.

But she said she believed most Pakistanis opposed extremism.

In a recent speech, she said: “This great land of ours is not a land of terrorists. It is not a land of militants. It is a land of labourers, who work hard to earn a living.”

Yesterday in her speech she said she would be the “leading light to tackle terrorism.”

Ms. Bhutto's body was on a special flight last night, bound for her hometown of Larkana in the south, where her father is buried in a giant mausoleum.

Her husband, Asif Ali Zardari, and their three children flew to Rawalpindi from Dubai, where the family had lived in exile. They planned to bury her today.

Suicide bomb attacks in Pakistan have sharply escalated this year since the bloody storming of the Red Mosque in Islamabad, which had been taken over by extremists.

Taliban and al-Qaeda militants have amassed in Pakistan's tribal area, which borders Afghanistan. U.S. Defence Secretary Robert Gates warned last week that al-Qaeda had now turned its focus on Pakistan, which has been a key ally in the U.S.-led war on terror.