KARACHI, Oct 21: Former prime minister and PPP Chairperson Benazir Bhutto called upon the government on Sunday to enlist international experts to track down the culprits responsible for the October 18 carnage in the city.

Talking to journalists at her Bilawal House residence after paying unannounced visits to hospitals and homes of party workers in Lyari, she said: “They have anti-terrorism experts who have the technical expertise to investigate attacks of this nature.” she said.

She added that she had discussed the matter with some countries, including the United States and Britain.

She also wanted the Pakistani investigators replaced because she feared that the security agencies had been infiltrated by “militants and Al Qaeda”.

Saying that Pakistan’s future was threatened by Talibanisation, she vowed to confront the terrorists and not to retract from her struggle for democracy and empowerment of the people.

Ms Bhutto said she was carrying on the struggle for the rights of the people and to provide them “roti, kapra aur makan”.

In view of the terrorist attack, Ms Bhutto said, she would review her campaign programme for the coming election. However, she declared that no power could prevent her from undertaking a mass contact tour.

She said the cowardly attack had failed to intimidate her and the elements who attacked her rally actually wanted to take the country back to the dark ages.

She said it was not an attack just on her person or on the PPP caravan but on democracy and the integrity of the country, adding that the culprits knew that they could not challenge her politically because the vast majority of the country had rejected them.

Ms Bhutto criticised religious fanatics and said they did not want the democratic process to continue because they knew that democracy empowered the people. They also knew that the empowered people would not join the army of the so-called jihadis.

These elements wanted to derail the democratic process because it suited their designs to promote their agenda of so-called jihad.

She appealed to mothers to tell their sons not to play in the hands of the coward like the people who planned and carried out the October 18 attack in the darkness of the night, killing over 140 and injuring many more.

She said that Islam was a religion of peace and prohibited the killing of innocent people, particularly women.

She said that the grand reception on October 18 had demonstrated the power of PPP. The people, she claimed, considered the PPP as the only political party which could steer the country out of the current social morass and economic and political instability.

She said that extremists were enemies of the people and the country but since the 1980s such elements had been gaining strength.

Ms Bhutto said that switching off the streetlights on Sharea Faisal that night was an act of sabotage and demanded that

the matter should be thoroughly investigated.

She also referred to her application for registering an FIR of the incident which were offences under the PPC and the Anti-Terrorism Act and demanded that a case be registered and investigated to bring the culprits and their masterminds to justice.

However, there was confusion whether a second FIR could be registered after the police had got one registered soon after the incident.