Nusrat Bhutto passes away

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ISLAMABAD, Oct 24 (AFP): Pakistan's former first lady and mother of assassinated former prime minister Benazir Bhutto died on Sunday after a protracted illness, the Pakistan government said. "With profound grief and sorrow it is announced that former first lady Begum Nusrat Bhutto breathed her last in Dubai today," the government in Islamabad said in a statement. Nusrat Bhutto, 82, was the mother-in-law of Pakistan's president Asif Ali Zardari and widow of former prime minister Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto, the founder of the ruling Pakistan People's Party (PPP). Her body will be buried in Garhi Khuda Bux, the ancestral graveyard of the Bhutto family in southern Sindh province, the statement said. Nusrat Bhutto, twice elected a member of the Pakistan parliament, had a difficult political career. Her husband and Pakistan's first democratically elected leader, Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, was hanged by the dictatorship of General Zia-ul-Haq in 1979. She led the PPP until her daughter Benazir Bhutto took over in 1984. Benazir Bhutto was killed in 2007 after addressing an election campaign rally in the garrison city of Rawalpindi, near the capital Islamabad. Her widower Asif Ali Zardari led the PPP to election victory in February 2008 and is now president.