Latest chapter in Pak's blood-soaked history

Benazir Bhutto falling to assassins' bullets forms the latest chapter in Pakistan's blood-soaked history marked by assassinations and killings of its leaders.

The charismatic former Premier, whose assassination shocked the world, is the fourth Pakistani leader to have met with a violent end.

Bhutto's end came in the same city where Liaquat Ali Khan, who had succeeded Pakistan founder Mohd Ali Jinnah as leader of the country, was shot dead.

Khan was scheduled to make an important announcement in a public meeting in Rawalpindi on October 16, 1951, when he was shot twice in the chest by a man sitting just 15 yards away from him.

The motive of the killer, identified as Saad Akbar and reportedly killed by the mob, has never been fully revealed. Upon his death, Khan was given the title 'Shaheed-e-Millat' or Martyr of the Nation.

Bhutto's father Zulfiqar Ali, a popular prime minister, who invited the wrath of General Zia-ul-Haq after serious differences arose between them over political and civil disorder in the country, was hanged, again in Rawalpindi, on April 4, 1979.

In a macabre coincidence of sorts, Liaqat Bagh is the same place where the first Prime Minister Liaqat Ali Khan was assassinated and Bhutto's father Zulfiqar Ali was hanged at a spot not very far from the place.

Military ruler Gen Zia-ul-Haq, who got Zulfiqar Ali hanged, also met with an unnatural death, dying in an air crash on August 17, 1988.

Conspiracy theories abound about the plane crash in which Zia-ul-Haq died, with a popular theory being that it was planned by some sections of the Army and America's Central Intelligence Agency or the Soviet KGB.

Current ruler Pakistan President Pervez Musharraf has survived four assassination attempts by radical elements in the last few years.

The Bhutto family itself has been tragedy prone and its members over two generations have met a violent end. The series of tragic deaths that began with the hanging of Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto included the killing of Bhutto's brother Shahnawaz under suspicious circumstances in France.

The killing of another of her brothers Mir Murtaza in 1996 contributed to destabilising her second term as prime minister.

Referring to her blood-stained family history, Bhutto wrote in the introduction to her memoir Daughter of the East that 'I didn't choose this life, it chose me.'