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.

If Musharraf had half a brain he would have refrained from expressing anything but regret and determination to find those responsible for the attack. Musharraf is apparently lacking any brains whatsoever:

Pakistan President Pervez Musharraf conceded that a gunman may have shot Benazir Bhutto but said the opposition leader exposed herself to danger and bore responsibility for her death, CBS News said on Saturday.

Musharraf was also quoted as telling the CBS “60 Minutes” program to be broadcast on Sunday that his government did everything it could to provide security for Bhutto, who was killed last week in a gun and suicide-bomb attack after a political rally.

“For standing up outside the car, I think it was she to blame alone. Nobody else. Responsibility is hers,” Musharraf said in the interview taped on Saturday morning.

And that is damage control gone very very wrong.

Some very positive developments in the affair:

Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf said Wednesday that British investigators are heading to Pakistan to help clear up the confusion surrounding Thursday’s assassination of Benazir Bhutto.

Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf talks about Benazir Bhutto’s “martyrdom” on Wednesday.

“I am very thankful to [British] Prime Minister Gordon Brown that when I made this request he accepted that,” Musharraf said in a nationally televised address.

The Scotland Yard team, he said, “will solve all the confusion” surrounding how Bhutto died last week.

Musharraf expressed his condolences about the killing of Bhutto, who he said “has been martyred by terrorists.”

Allowing a Scotland Yard team into the country, providing that their work is not hampered by authorities, could go a long way towards establishing the central facts of the case in a manner that Pakistanis (and others) can trust. It’s also interesting to see Musharraf going out of his way to acknowledge Bhutto’s status as a martyr. We’ll have to see how this plays out but it’s obvious that he is under substantial pressure.

The specific dates have surfaced on Pakistan Politics and CNN. Although this was expected it will be interesting to see what sort of backlash, if any, the government faces for this decision.

Update:
Benazir Bhutto’s party is, predictably, rejecting the delay:

“We reject this delay outright,” said Sen. Babar Awan from Bhutto’s Pakistan People’s Party, the most powerful opposition group.

“Musharraf fears outright defeat. If this election process is jeopardized, they (our followers) may protest again and there is a chance of riots.”

Sen. Tariq Azim, from the ruling party, said the opposition was “turning a blind eye to realties on the ground” following the assassination, but stressed the ruling party had not asked the election commission for any delay.

David Miliband, Foreign Secretary, called for the elections to take place as soon as possible.

“If the elections can go ahead in a safe way next week, then obviously they should,” he told the BBC.

I didn’t think that the sunroof story would would have any staying power:

Pakistan’s Interior Ministry backtracked Tuesday on its statement that Benazir Bhutto died because she hit her head on a sunroof latch during a shooting and bomb attack.

The government also published a reward offer in several national newspapers to anyone who could identify two suspects from the killing.

Interior Ministry spokesman Javed Iqbal Cheema told CNN the ministry will wait for the findings from forensic investigators before making a conclusion about her cause of death.

The plot thickens:

The day she was assassinated last Thursday, Benazir Bhutto had planned to reveal new evidence alleging the involvement of Pakistan’s intelligence agencies in rigging the country’s upcoming elections, an aide said Monday.

Bhutto had been due to meet U.S. Sen. Arlen Specter, R-Pa., and Rep. Patrick Kennedy, D-R.I., to hand over a report charging that the military Inter-Services Intelligence agency was planning to fix the polls in the favor of President Pervez Musharraf.

Safraz Khan Lashari, a member of the Pakistan People’s Party election monitoring unit, said the report was “very sensitive” and that the party wanted to initially share it with trusted American politicians rather than the Bush administration, which is seen here as strongly backing Musharraf.

“It was compiled from sources within the (intelligence) services who were working directly with Benazir Bhutto,” Lashari said, speaking Monday at Bhutto’s house in her ancestral village of Naudero, where her husband and children continued to mourn her death.

If true, this is really going to turn up the heat on Musharraf and Pakistan will further destabilize. This really illustrates the nightmarish web of conflicting alliances that exist within the ISI. I’ll post statements from Specter and Kennedy when, or if ,they become available.

The controversy continues to deepen with each passing day:

Rawalpindi’s police chief stopped doctors at the hospital where Benazir Bhutto died from conducting an autopsy, according to a lawyer on the hospital’s board.

In a video released Sunday, Benazir Bhutto, far right, appears through the sunroof before shots ring out.

It was a violation of Pakistani criminal law and prevented a medical conclusion about what killed the former prime minister, said Athar Minallah, who serves on the board that manages Rawalpindi General Hospital.

However, the police chief involved, Aziz Saud, told CNN that he suggested an autopsy be done, but that Bhutto’s husband objected.

It may take a little while but I think we’ll get to the bottom of this story and find the exact cause of her death.

This does seem to show her being shot but I wouldn’t say that it’s conclusive. There’s only one way to prove that the bullets actually made contact. I’ll continue to post videos as they surface.

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.”

The exact cause of death seems to still be in question but the shooter/bomber can be seen in this video. I love how her security detail immediately seeks cover instead of working to protect Bhutto. Lives might have been saved, including their own, if they’d pounced on the gunman instead of ducking.