Pakistan’s Interior Ministry today backed off its much-derided claim that Benazir Bhutto died after hitting her head on the latch of her car's sunroof while ducking to avoid gunfire. The retraction will likely intensify the controversy around the opposition leader’s death, CNN reports. Meanwhile, elections scheduled for Tuesday were postponed until February, the New York Times reports.
A ministry spokesman said the sunroof theory was based on doctors’ initial findings. “I was just narrating the facts, you know, and nothing less nothing more,” he said. The formal postponement of voting, expected for days in the wake of the violence that followed Bhutto's assassination, calls into question the stability of the Musharraf government, which is "taking a risk of increased polarization in delaying the elections," a Western diplomat told the Times. (More Benazir Bhutto stories.)