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Benazir Bhutto
(21 June 1953 ? 27 December 2007) was a
Pakistani
politician
who became the 11th and 13th
prime minister of Pakistan
. She served from 1988 to 1990 and then from 1993 to 1996. She made history as the first
woman
to lead a
democratic
government in a
Muslim
-majority country.
[1]
[2]
Benazir Bhutto was a
liberal
and a
secularist
, and she played a significant role in the
Pakistan People's Party
(PPP) from the early 1980s until she was killed in 2007.
Born in
Karachi
to a politically influential and wealthy family with
Sindhi
and
Kurdish
roots. Bhutto was the elder daughter of
Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto
and
Nusrat Bhutto
(nee Ispahani). She studied at
Harvard University
and the
University of Oxford
.
[3]
Her father, Zulfikar Bhutto, was a prominent leader of the PPP and served as
prime minister
. After her father's ousting and execution following a military coup in 1977, Benazir Bhutto, along with her mother Nusrat, took charge of the PPP and led the Movement for the Restoration of Democracy. She faced imprisonment under the military government of
Muhammad Zia-ul-Haq
and later chose self-exile in
Britain
in 1984.
[4]
Bhutto was the first woman
elected
to
lead
a
Muslim
state. She was elected
Prime Minister of Pakistan
twice. She was sworn in for the first time in 1988 but removed from office 20 months later under orders of then-
president
Ghulam Ishaq Khan
on a belief that she was
corrupt
. In 1993 Bhutto was re-elected but was again removed in 1996 on similar charges, this time by President
Farooq Leghari
.
En route to a rally in Karachi on 18 October 2007, two explosions occurred shortly after Bhutto had landed and left Jinnah International Airport returning from her exile. She was not injured, but the explosions, later found to be a suicide-bomb attack that killed 139 people and injured at least 450.
Two months after her assassination attempt, she was shot to death while getting into a
vehicle
to leave a
political
meeting for the
Pakistan Peoples Party
in
Rawalpindi
before detonating an
explosive
vest on December 27, 2007. She was 54 years old.
[5]
The exploding kills 24 people and wounded 43 others.
[6]
She is called
Shaheed-e-Jamhuriat
(
Martyr
of
Democracy
) by her fans.
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