By Salman Masood and Victoria Burnett Hundreds of thousands of distraught Pakistanis gathered Friday to bury Benazir Bhutto, the former prime minister assassinated a day earlier at an election rally, while violence flared across the country, with reports of at least 24 dead.

By Saeed Shahin Larkana They came in their tens of thousands to see another Bhutto buried. The mausoleum in the ancestral village of Garhi Khuda Bakhsh swallowed another murdered family member. Benazir Bhutto was laid to rest with all the chaos and devotion that marked her life. There was no pomp.

GARHI KHUDA BAKSH, Pakistan _ On Benazir Bhutto's last trip home, tens of thousands of supporters came to see her, however they could, on tractors, by foot, hanging off the backs of buses. To them, the former prime minister was both a queen and a loved one.

Pakistan's government asserted Friday that al-Qaida was behind the assassination of Benazir Bhutto, and offered the transcript from a phone tap as proof. Hundreds of thousands mobbed her funeral as the army tried to quell rioting elsewhere that left 27 dead.

Hundreds of thousands of mourners thronged the mausoleum of Pakistan's most famous political dynasty on Friday in an outpouring of emotion for Benazir Bhutto.