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 The early morning incident occurred in Naseerabad, about 150 miles east of Quetta, the capital of Baluchistan province, said Wajid Akbar, the district police chief.
He said police had no immediate information about the motive for the attack or who was behind it. However, killings and violence have been common in elections in Pakistan, where Bhutto, a former prime minister, recently launched her campaign for the Jan. 8 parliamentary election.
Beyond the campaign, Pakistan, which has been a key U.S. ally in the war on terror, has been beleaguered by suicide and other attacks as well as fighting between Islamic militants and armed forces. In October, suicide bombers struck at a parade celebrating Bhutto's return from exile, killing more than 140 people in the southern city of Karachi.
Pakistan's political turmoil deepened on Nov. 3, when President Pervez Musharraf imposed emergency rule and fired Supreme Court justices who were preparing to rule on the validity of his October re-election.
He then replaced the fired judges with his loyalists, who promptly dismissed all complaints against the former general's election.
Under pressure from the U.S. and domestic opposition parties, Musharraf promised to lift the emergency by Dec. 16, but Attorney General Malik Mohammed Qayyum said Friday that it would end on Dec. 15, although he said the dismissed judges would not be restored to their positions.
Qayyum's remarks were likely to irk Bhutto and another former prime minister, Nawaz Sharif
- whose government was ousted by Musharraf in a coup in 1999 - who have been trying to reach agreement on a set of conditions they want the government to meet for their participation in next month's elections.
Both have accused Musharraf, who retired from the army last month before being sworn in as a civilian president, of planning to rig the elections.
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 Sharif, who leads the conservative Pakistan Muslim League-N party, has been pushing for a boycott of the vote, a move that would undermine Musharraf's U.S.-backed efforts to transform his military dictatorship into a democratic, civilian administration.
He has insisted that the Supreme Court judges sacked by Musharraf be reinstated before the vote. But Bhutto has indicated she would prefer to reinstate them after the elections.
Representatives of Bhutto's Pakistan People's Party and the Pakistan Muslim League-N have said they will continue talks on two remaining sticking points in their demands, after announcing they had already reached agreement on 15 issues. They would not specify the demands for their participation in the election until they are endorsed by their leaders.
Meanwhile, Maj. Gen. Nasser Janjua said government troops had forced Islamic militants out of their strongholds in the scenic Swat valley north of Islamabad, and were pursuing a group of hard-core supporters of Maulana Fazlullah, a radical cleric.
Janjua was careful not to claim success, saying the militants remain dangerous and likely will try to regroup for at least one major counter-attack. He estimated it will take three to four months to "stabilize" the situation.
Since the military launched a major counterinsurgency operation in the area on Nov. 24, about 290 militants have been killed and 140 others captured, Janjua told reporters at a base the army has set up in Mingora, Swat's main town.
Musharraf's government has struggled to contain increasing militancy in the north, mainly in the tribal regions along the border with Afghanistan. Musharraf cited stepped-up militancy in the north as a reason for imposing a state of emergency.
[Associated
Press; By ABDUL SATTAR]
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