New Delhi: In a dramatic U-turn, Pakistan government has “apologised” for claiming that former prime minister Benazir Bhutto died of a skull fracture after hitting the sunroof of her car during the suicide attack on Thursday.
Caretaker Interior Minister Hamid Nawaz Khan has asked the media and people to "forgive and ignore" comments made by his ministry's spokesman Javed Iqbal Cheema which were slammed by the Pakistan People's Party (PPP) as "lies" and led to an uproar in the country and abroad.
“The caretaker government of Prime Minister Mohammedmian Soomro on Monday apologised for the highly provocative comment made by the interior ministry spokesman that Bhutto died because she hit the lever of her bullet-proof Land Cruiser on the fateful evening," The News reported on Tuesday.
Cheema's comment caused a huge uproar as private TV channels obtained footage showing the assassin pointing and firing a gun at Benazir. She is then shown collapsing into the vehicle. It is only later that a suicide bomber blows up at the site in Rawalpindi killing at least 20 people.
The Interior Minister made the apology during a briefing for Pakistani newspaper editors on Monday.
Meanwhile, Punjab province on Tuesday issued a front-page advertisement in newspapers that offered a reward of Rs 1 crore for information about the gunman and suspected suicide bomber seen in the photos and video footage of the assassination.
The briefing by caretaker Soomro was also attended by the foreign, interior and information ministers and senior officials.
During the briefing, an editor asked why Cheema had said that a lever on the sun-roof had caused a fatal injury when the manufacturers of the car and Benazir's husband Asif Ali Zardari had stated that there was no metallic lever that could have caused the wound.
Khan said the spokesman's comments may have been a mistake as "we are faujis (soldiers) and we are not so articulate to present our views as you journalists can".
Both the interior minister and spokesman Cheema are retired army officers.
"I am sorry if that happened and please forgive us and ignore the comment," he told the editors.
Earlier, Soomro tried to defend the interior ministry's spokesman, saying he was just relaying facts that he had been told about, especially about the cause of death.
"We are conducting an investigation and all TV footage, all evidence, that would be available will help in reaching a definite conclusion," Soomro told the editors.
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