ISLAMABAD, Pakistan -- As slain opposition leader Benazir Bhutto was laid to rest in her ancestral village yesterday, the government of President Pervez Musharraf laid the blame for her assassination on a Taliban commander and said other politicians were also under threat.

The government cited intercepted telephone conversations in pointing the finger at militant leader Baitullah Mehsud, who is believed to operate in the borderlands near Afghanistan. It also blamed him for an earlier attempt on Bhutto's life in October; after that bombing, Bhutto had said she believed rogue elements within the intelligence establishment or the security forces had colluded with Islamic militants in the attack.

In an apparent attempt to deflect anger at Musharraf, who has been accused of failing to provide Bhutto with adequate security against bombers, the government went on to make a startling claim: that she was killed neither by gunshots nor shrapnel in Thursday's attack in the garrison town of Rawalpindi, but instead died of a skull fracture when she hit her head on her SUV's open sunroof. Her supporters scoffed at the assertion.

Violence flared in several Pakistani cities, leaving at least 30 people dead during the first 24 hours after the former prime minister's death. The government deployed thousands of police, paramilitary troops and soldiers across the country, giving those in the most volatile areas shoot-to-kill orders against looters and rioters.

For many, the assassination of the country's best-known political figure was a cataclysmic event, a collectively experienced tragedy. "It's like your Kennedy assassination," said college student Imran Ashfaq, his eyes reddened as he watched the TV news in a nearly deserted teahouse in the capital. "I'll always remember this time."

Much of the country was virtually shut down after the government decreed three days of mourning and Bhutto's followers called for a general strike. In most cities and towns, streets were deserted and shops tightly shuttered; people stayed home from schools and offices.

Pakistani television stations played endless footage of Bhutto, showing old black-and-white photos of her as a gawky teen, a glamorous, reed-thin young woman, a dark-eyed mother cuddling her young children.

Banner headlines in many Pakistani newspapers were unabashedly emotional. "Cry the beloved country," read the headline in the English-language paper The News, its white-on-black type stained red as if with drops of blood. "Farewell Benazir."

In Bhutto's remote home village of Naudero, tens of thousands of weeping, chanting mourners lined the route taken by an ambulance bearing her simple wooden casket. Her husband and three teenage children escorted the body to the family shrine for burial beside her father, Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, who was hanged nearly three decades ago by the military regime that had overthrown him.

Bhutto's death threw Pakistan's political world into chaos less than two weeks before parliamentary elections that were to have shown the West that this precarious country was moving toward democracy. Yesterday, Prime Minister Mohammedmian Soomro said the government did not plan to postpone the Jan. 8 elections, despite Bhutto's death and boycotts by other politicians.

The Bush administration has pushed for the elections as a way to signal that this vital U.S. ally in the war on terrorism was moving toward true democracy. In the hours after Bhutto's killing, the administration said the elections should go ahead as planned, but yesterday officials backed off that stance.

"We believe that if elections can proceed as scheduled, smoothly and safely, then we would certainly encourage that happening," U.S. State Department spokesman Tom Casey said. "I think regardless of whether they happen the on 8th or some date shortly thereafter, what's important is that there is a certainty on the part of not only Pakistan's political leadership but the Pakistani people that there will be a date certain that they will be choosing their new government and new leadership."

In addition to blaming Taliban leader Mehsud for Bhutto's death, Pakistan's Interior Ministry contradicted reports by witnesses and doctors that Bhutto had been shot and then cut down by a suicide bomber, saying she had been hit by neither bullets nor shrapnel.

"No bullets ... were found in her body," Interior Ministry spokesman Javed Iqbal Cheema told journalists, saying she was fatally wounded when the percussion of the blast caused Bhutto, who had been standing up in her SUV to wave to supporters, to hit her head on the sunroof's handle.

Incredulous aides to Bhutto rejected the claim. "We all saw what happened to her," said one senior associate, who spoke on condition of anonymity, because he was attending funeral rites that continued into the evening. After the attack, witnesses described seeing a bloodied Bhutto.

Violence was concentrated in the cities of Hyderabad and Karachi, both located in Bhutto's home province of Sindh, where troops were sent into the streets after protesters, furious over Bhutto's killing, torched cars, buildings, railway cars and fast-food restaurants. Unrest also hit Peshawar, the capital of the North-West Frontier Province bordering Afghanistan and a frequent flash point for fighting.

The Interior Ministry said the government accusation against militant leader Mehsud was based on an electronic intercept of an alleged telephone conversation between him and another person. Mehsud is a wanted Taliban commander based in the tribal area at the Afghan border. He is believed to have links to al-Qaida, and to have issued a previous threat against Bhutto.

In the transcript released by the Interior Ministry, Mehsud is quoted as commenting on the "spectacular job" done by the attackers.

"They were very brave boys who killed her," the transcript quoted Mehsud as saying, without mentioning Bhutto by name.

The government did not disclose how the transcript was obtained, or when and where the recording was made.

At the time of the attack, Bhutto was waving at supporters from the sunroof in her armored SUV. Witnesses said the vehicle was first hit by gunshots and then, almost immediately afterward, rocked by the powerful bomb.

Many of her supporters accuse Musharraf of at least indirect responsibility for Bhutto's death. Before she was killed, Bhutto had objected to what she said was insufficient security provided by the government, including a lack of jamming equipment meant to help forestall bombings with a remotely detonated device.

Cheema, the ministry spokesman, also said authorities had determined that Mehsud was behind the attack in the early hours of Oct. 19 against Bhutto's homecoming procession in Karachi when she returned from eight years of self-imposed exile.

Bhutto escaped injury in that double bombing, but more than 150 other people were killed. Until now, authorities have not made any claim to have solved that case, and the timing, at a time when angry demonstrators are blaming Musharraf for Bhutto's death, struck many people as suspicious.

Mehsud has publicly denied having threatened Bhutto before she returned to Pakistan. At the time, a Pakistani newspaper quoted him as saying Bhutto would be greeted with a suicide attack.

The government also disclosed for the first time that opposition leader Nawaz Sharif was also under threat of attack. Sharif, a former prime minister, has been holding mass rallies around the country without incident, including a huge homecoming celebration last month when he, too, returned from exile.

Some political opponents expressed fears that by airing alleged threats against politicians, Musharraf might be seeking a pretext to reimpose a state of emergency, or de facto martial law. The Pakistani leader suspended the constitution and assumed sweeping powers during an emergency decree imposed Nov. 3 and lifted Dec. 15.

Under it, he jailed political opponents, imposed restrictions on independent television stations and fired senior judges whose past rulings had angered him.

Laura King writes for the Los Angeles Times.

WHAT THE TRANSCRIPT SAYS

A transcript was released by the Pakistani government yesterday of a purported conversation between militant leader Baitullah Mehsud, who is referred to as Emir Sahib, and another man identified as a Maulvi Sahib, or Mr. Cleric. The government alleges that the intercepted conversation proves that al-Qaida was behind the assassination of Benazir Bhutto:

Maulvi Sahib: Peace be on you.

Mehsud: Peace be on you, too.

Maulvi Sahib: How are you Emir Sahib?

Mehsud: Fine.

Maulvi Sahib: Congratulations. I arrived now tonight.

Mehsud: Congratulations to you, too.

Maulvi Sahib: They were our men there.

Mehsud: Who were they?

Maulvi Sahib : There were Saeed, the second was Badarwala Bilal and Ikramullah was also there.

Mehsud: The three did it?

Maulvi Sahib: Ikramullah and Bilal did it.

Mehsud: Then congratulations to you again.

Maulvi: Where are you? I want to meet with you?

Mehsud: I am in Makin. Come I am at Anwar Shah's home.

Maulvi Sahib: OK I will come.

Mehsud: Do not inform their family presently.

Maulvi Sahib: Right.

Mehsud: It was a spectacular job. They were very brave boys who killed her.

Maulvi Sahib: Praise be to God. I will give you more details when I come.

Mehsud: I will wait for you. Congratulation once again.

Maulvi Sahib: Congratulations to you as well.

Mehsud: Any service?

Maulvi: Thank you very much?

Mehsud: Peace be on you.

Maulvi: Same to you.

[Associated Press]