CNN has the story:

Two suicide bombers exploded a car Tuesday at a building containing the offices of Pakistan’s national investigative agency, destroying it and killing and wounding people inside.

Police said 17 people died and 175 were wounded in the attack in Lahore, and three more were killed in a separate suicide bombing in an area of the city known as Model Town. All three bombers died.

The Federal Investigation Agency is a national investigative agency — similar to the FBI in the United States — and is surrounded by heavy security.

Two suicide car bombers drove their vehicle into the eight-story building housing the offices of the Federal Investigation Agency at about 9:30 a.m., according to the agency.

Lahore police describe the building, where about 1,000 people work, as destroyed.

Sadly, the death toll will probably rise for a while thanks to the significant number of injured.

MEMRI provides the full video and a transcript. It’s full of the usual threats and theatrics. He even tears up his American passport:

In a symbolic act of protest at America’s continuing detention and mental and physical torture of Muslims like Sheik Omar Abd Al-Rahman, John Walker Lindh, Abu Zubeidah, and thousands of others like them, and in protest at the cruel and barbaric treatment it metes out to millions of innocents around the world, and in symbolic rejection of the American citizenship which honorable, decent, and compassionate people are ashamed to carry, I will now proceed to destroy my American passport. Yes, this is the original passport.

It appears that the bearded one is a bit of a drama queen.

They certainly picked an interesting day to make the announcement:

Al-Qaida announced Thursday that it would soon release a new video message from American-born member Adam Gadahn that would be the first message from the terror group in 2008.

“Coming soon by the will of God, an invitation to reflection and repentance,” read a banner produced by al-Qaida’s media wing, al- Sahab, and displayed on a militant Web site.

An image of the bearded Gadahn wearing a red-and-white checkered Arab scarf appears on the banner.

John Cox, of the Cox & Forkum cartoon team (2003 Interview), has illustrated a new book that should appeal to BoW readers:

Chuck Sobietti was a seventeen-year veteran of the U.S. military. He’d seen it all - Gulf War I, Somalia, Bosnia, Afghanistan - but nothing in his experience could prepare him for one fateful day in Iraq and its aftermath.

Part political thriller, part war story, and part “classic” action comic book, Matamoros follows one of America’s heroes in the “Long War” - an ordinary guy who discovers that only extraordinary situations exist when the enemy is a protean entity which refuses to adhere to the laws of war or the laws of civilized nations.

Written by Sleet and Darius LaMonica, and illustrated by John Cox of the Cox & Forkum political cartoon team, Matamoros is the first comic book focusing on the U.S. military’s fight against radical Islamists.

Buy the book (It’s only $3.00) and visit the Matamoros blog.

The government won’t stand in the way:

The Pakistani government has no problem with officials from Benazir Bhutto’s political party exhuming the slain opposition leader’s body if they see a need to do so, an Interior Ministry spokesman said Saturday.

Brig. Javed Iqbal Cheema made the remark when asked about comments from a top Bhutto aide who helped bathe Benazir Bhutto’s body after her death.

Sherry Rehman, Pakistan People’s Party information secretary, said it was clear that the former Pakistani prime minister suffered bullet wounds to her head, contrary to a government report that she died because she hit her head on a sunroof lever.

The details are secondary to the root cause, radical Islamic nutjobs, but the details do matter - to some anyway:

CNN national security analyst Ken Robinson, who worked in U.S. intelligence in Pakistan during the Clinton administration, said he suspects Bhutto’s enemies are attempting to control her legacy by minimizing the attack’s role in her demise.

“They’re trying to deny her a martyr’s death, and in Islam, that’s pretty important,” Robinson said.

Bhutto, he said, threatens to become more influential in death than she was in life. “Her torch burns bright now forever. She’s forever young; she’s forever brave, challenging against all odds the party in power and challenging the military and Islamic extremism.”

There are a number of conflicting reports out there. The most recent one being the most surprising:

Pakistan’s interior ministry said Friday that Benazir Bhutto died from hitting her vehicle’s sunroof when she tried to duck after a suicide attack, and that no bullet or shrapnel was found in her.

Ministry spokesman Brigadier Javed Cheema said the opposition leader had died from a head wound she sustained when she smashed against the sunroof’s lever as she tried to shelter inside the car.

“The lever struck near her right ear and fractured her skull,” Cheema said. “There was no bullet or metal shrapnel found in the injury.”

I’m not sure that these details are relevant. However, I suppose that won’t stop the media from convening panels that toss around her decision to wave from the sunroof while ignoring the Islamic fundamentalists who initiated the barbaric attack.

Update 1:00 PM CST:
Now Farooq Naik, Bhutto’s lawyer, calls the sunroof story a lie:

“It is baseless. It is a pack of lies,” he said.

“Two bullets hit her, one in the abdomen and one in the head. It was a serious security lapse.”

None of this matters much in the end. It’s all just fodder for conspiracy theorists. I won’t be surprised when I receive email from Ron Paul supporters claiming that she was actually assassinated by a zombie sasquatch assassin sent by a secret CIA mind control program operating out of a subterranean base which was joint financed by the Zionist-controlled Federal Reserve and space aliens.

Update 11:40 AM CST:
CNN is confirming the sunroof lever story.

Romney proves, once again, that he is one of the few candidates who can speak plainly about the threat radical Islam poses to the entire free world.

NPR spoke to Farah, a member of Bhutto’s media team, from the hospital shortly after the attack. One gets the impression that Farah is weeping not only for Benazir but for Pakistan. Who can blame her? It is such a great loss. Is there anyone who can fill this void?

Pakistan’s future has never been so uncertain.

Reactions from the blogosphere - from the insightful to the insane:

All Things Pakistan
I, like most Pakistanis, am still too numb with shock and grief to think coherently about what has happened or what the implications of this are for the country and for the world. But this I know, whether you agreed with her political positions or not you cannot but be in shock. Even as I type these lines I am literally shaking. Hers was a tragic life story. So tragic that had it not been real no one would have believed it.

Tim Marshall (Sky News)
She knew the risks, she gambled, she lost. And Pakistan has lost. Lost a leader who, despite all her faults, was a democrat who wanted to move her country forward, bring its extremists to the centre, and take on the irreconcilables. That is why they murdered her. They could not reconcile with the possibility of a woman coming to power again. A strong, modern, working woman involved in politics is everything the Islamists fear.

Counterterrorism Blog
There is no doubt that the assassination of Bhutto will deepen the ongoing political crisis in Pakistan. The big question now before the Musharaf regime is that whether to hold the election or impose country wide emergency again.

The Belmont Club
He might have added that meaningful elections can occur only when the armies — in this case the Pakistani Army and the armed Islamic militants — are committed to the processes of democracy. When every group under arms within a society is determined to settle the question of power by combat the role for the ballot is small indeed. The next few days will show whether the Pakistani Army — for it will surely not be the Taliban — can rededicate itself to electoral democracy. Pakistan needs its George Washington. Unfortunately it only has its Pervez Musharraf.

Michelle Malkin
Update 10:48am: Naturally, the tinfoil hatters on the Left are out in full force.

Ivory Tower
This is pure speculation, of course, but one has to wonder if Bush, at least indirectly, contributed to the assassination of Pakistan’s former prime minister and opposition leader Benazir Bhutto.

Texas Hold ‘Em Blogger
Al Qaeda has claimed credit for the assassination. But the Roasted Paulnuts just think we need to withdraw all our troops from all over the world and build Fortress America and Al Qaeda will just leave us alone. Same with the Democrat candidates. And The Huckster wants to apply the Golden Rule to dealing with Iran and the rest of the Islamofascists. If the 2008 election doesn’t turn on the issue of national security and doing whatever it takes to keep these rubes out of the White House and make sure an adult is actually in charge, we deserve whatever happens to us. If we aren’t safe from the Islamonazis, nothing else matters.

Tel-Chai Nation
It’s very tragic indeed, that a woman with common sense in a world full of tyrants should fall.

Mark Steyn
Benazir Bhutto’s return to Pakistan had a mad recklessness about it which give today’s events a horrible inevitability. As I always say when I’m asked about her, she was my next-door neighbor for a while - which affects a kind of intimacy, though in fact I knew her only for sidewalk pleasantries. She was beautiful and charming and sophisticated and smart and modern, and everything we in the west would like a Muslim leader to be - though in practice, as Pakistan’s Prime Minister, she was just another grubby wardheeler from one of the world’s most corrupt political classes.

Rantburg
Analysts say that President Musharraf himself is unlikely to have ordered her assassination, but that elements of the army and intelligence service would have stood to lose money and power if she had become Prime Minister. The ISI, in particular, includes some Islamists who became radicalised while running the American-funded campaign against the Soviets in Afghanistan and remained fiercely opposed to Ms Bhutto on principle. Saudi Arabia, which has strong influence in Pakistan, is also thought to frown on Ms Bhutto as being too secular and Westernised and to favour Nawaz Sharif, another former Prime Minister.

Cheat Seeking Missiles
Against this background of responsible reporting of a tragedy with potentially inconceivable consequences, the NYT stands out as an immature, inappropriate and unruly guest at the party, hardly differentiated from the Kos-tic rants of the leftyblogs.

Jihad Watch
US Special Forces to increase presence in Pakistan — Al-Qaeda’s new central battlefield. This is even more likely after the murder of Benazir Bhutto. But the military is still talking about educational and employment initiatives, as if they will make the jihad go away. This despite the fact that study after study has shown that jihadists are generally better educated and wealthier than their peers.

Blog of the Moderate Left
It’s a simple fact that Pakistan is the most dangerous country in the world right now. The country is nuclear armed and incredibly unstable, home to extremely conservative Islamic jihadists and yet westernized enough that it elected the first woman to serve as leader of a Muslim nation. It is one of the most likely homes of Osama bin Laden, and the center of al Qaeda activity in the world. And yet Pervez Musharraf, the strongman dictator of Pakistan, has been a reliable ally in the war on terror, and has received western support.

Outside the Beltway
As the only nuclear-armed majority Muslim country, the home to a large population of Deobandi and Salafist Islamist radicals, and, possibly, the country that’s hosting Osama bin Laden within its borders, Pakistan is a very sensitive country in a very sensitive condition since the unrest of a month ago. Whatever else may happen the situation has probably become more serious now.

Pat’s Blog
She was too pro American and hated terrorist, she was a political rival to Musharraf and most of all she was a woman. We all knew it was only a matter of time before they got her. There is no doubt the government of Pakistan was behind it but the real truth will never come out.

Flopping Aces
It’s a sad day for Pakistan and a sad day for all those who worked hard under conditions of great personal danger to save Pakistan from extremism and death.

Patterico’s Pontifications
I think many Pakistanis will question the role of Musharraf’s government in Bhutto’s assassination. I hope he promises and follows through with a full, reliable and neutral investigation … and I hope that investigation shows he wasn’t involved.

Macsmind
One thing is for sure, this is a significant victory for Al Qaeda’s psych-ops in Pakistan which has already pretty much neutralized the military there.

Medicine Agency Blog
Emergency rule will be back: The Pakistani military has apparently been put on red alert, although emergency rule hasn’t been initiated yet. Odds are it will be if the violence is severe enough, which I think is very likely. This is a delicate issue for Musharraf, who just resigned as Army Chief. If there is martial law, then the current Army Chief, Ashfaq Kayani, would be in charge. By all accounts, though, Kayani is loyal to Musharraf, so the former general would probably effectively be in charge.

Neptunus Lex
Bhutto was a member of Pakistan’s political elite, leader of the country’s largest political party and the daughter of former President and Prime Minister Zulkifar Ali Bhutto. The Harvard educated Benazir Bhutto was the first female premier of a Muslim state, and a voice of political moderation. Despite allegations of corruption and misrule stemming from her previous time in office, the US government had placed fond hopes on Ms Bhutto’s ability to nudge Pakistan back towards democracy and draw the poison of Islamist opposition parties.

The death toll continues to rise:

At least 14 persons were killed including 10 in this port city as rioting broke out on Thursday in several parts of Pakistan following the assassination of former premier Benazir Bhutto.

Television channels reported 10 deaths in different parts of Karachi in incidents of firing, looting and setting vehicles, shops and petrol pumps on fire by enraged activists mourning the death of Bhutto.

Police officials said they had reports of people killed in violence but could not confirm the exact figures but said over 100 vehicles had been torched while miscreants had also set dozens of petrols pumps and shops on fire in various parts of the city.

Miscreants also attacked and set on fire police stations in Gulistan-e-Jauhar and Malir Goth.

Two people were killed in Lahore in Punaj province where shops, buses and cars were set on fire, a police officer said. Sporadic gunfire could also be heard echoing around the city.

Two other people were shot dead in the southern province of Sindh.

A clash between police and protesters in the Sindh town of Tando Allahyar left one protester dead, local mayor Kanwar Naveed Jamil told reporters.

Another man was shot dead in Khairpur district, police said.

The real danger here is that most of this anger will likely be directed at Musharraf and his government instead of the radical Islamic elements that have found safe haven in their country. I hope that Bhutto’s supporters find an appropriate and productive way to channel this anger in the coming days.