DawnNews TV and Aaj TV, citing sources at a hospital where she was rushed after the attack, and officials and members of Bhutto’s Pakistan People’s Party (PPP), said the former prime minister was dead.

However, there was no immediate official confirmation from Rawalpindi General Hospital, where the political icon was rushed after the attack.

Travellers in Bhutto’s convoy, including Sheri Rehman, her spokeswoman, and Nahid Khan, her political secretary, were both in critical condition at the hospital, according to numerous media reports.

Sources from sources at Rawalpindi General Hospital and Rawalpindi Civil Hospital told Deutsche Presse-Agentur dpa that at least 19 people were killed in the attack.

Bhutto had left the rally after addressing a crowd of several thousand people, when the bomber blew himself up outside the main gate through which her security convoy was travelling, DawnNews TV reported.

Television footage showed dead and wounded people on the ground, and DawnNews reported that police had located a severed human head that they suspected belonged to the bomber.

On October 19, a suicide bomber killed 140 people in a failed attempt to kill Bhutto as her motorcade wound through the southern port city of Karachi just hours after she returned from exile abroad.

Thousands of distraught workers from Bhutto’s PPP were converging on the hospital in which her body lies on Thursday night, setting fire to tires and pelting police with stones, witnesses said.