LONDON, Jan 13: Evidence amassed by Scotland Yard detectives points towards Al Qaeda militants being responsible for the assassination of Benazir Bhutto, Sunday Times said quoting British officials.

But the ST report also quoted Scotland Yard insisting that its task was not to establish who killed her but only how she died.

“Even that is not straightforward. They cannot examine the body, and the crime scene and Bhutto’s vehicle were both scrubbed within hours,” said the author of the report Christina Lamb.

Ms Lamb recalled that Musharraf’s interior ministry had released a transcript of a purported telephone conversation between Mehsud and a militant cleric in which, though Bhutto’s name was not mentioned, he appeared to congratulate him on the death, saying: “Fantastic job. Very brave boys, the ones who killed her.”

“The transcript was met with scepticism. Critics pointed out Mehsud had previously been working with the Pakistan military, receiving hundreds of thousands of dollars and that if the country’s intelligence services could tape his conversations, they should be able to capture him,” said the ST report.

However, according to the same report, British and American officials, who have examined the transcript, say they believe it is genuine and share Musharraf’s view that Mehsud is behind most of the suicide bombings in Pakistan.