ISLAMABAD, May 8: PPP Chairperson Benazir Bhutto has expressed shock over the suicide bombing in Karachi.

In a statement issued here by the media centre of the PPP, she condemned the attack and said the bombing would adversely affect Pakistan’s standing in the world community. It would frighten away investment and endanger lives of ordinary citizens, she said.

She said under Gen Musharraf’s regime a spiral of violence had engulfed the country as he had released wanted militants and those who had been convicted by courts in heinous crimes. “The result is a deadly cycle of terror which is growing with each passing day.”

The PPP leader said that since the dismissal of the PPP government, civil and political institutions had been systematically weakened. “A country which in 1996 was one of the 10 emerging capital markets of the world, has descended into the hell of terror and uncertainty,” she said.

She said those who killed innocent civilians were indulging in barbarism.

“It is the most worrying and new dimension of Wednesday’s terrorist attack that it was an act of suicide bombing, something which never happened before in Pakistan, she said.

Meanwhile, the PPP has welcomed the concern expressed by the International Parliamentary Union over the rearrest of Senator Zardari.

In a statement, a spokesman for the PPP said that the call by the international body had vindicated the PPP’s position that Senator Zardari was a prisoner of conscience who had been held in prison at gunpoint only for political ends.