Benazeer

Born in 1953, Benazir Bhutto was reared in Pakistani politics and became the country’s and the Muslim world’s first female prime minister. Twice elected to and twice expelled from that office, she spent much of her later life in exile. Her return to Pakistan in 2007 was marked by violence from the start and ended with her assassination.
Benazir Bhutto, who became the first woman to serve as prime minister of a Muslim country, was assassinated Thursday when an attacker opened fire and then blew himself up after a political rally in Pakistan. Here, a look at key moments in her often stormy life in politics:

June 21, 1953: Benazir Bhutto is born into a wealthy family in southern Pakistan.

1973: Bhutto's father, Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, a former Pakistani president, begins serving as prime minister. Benazir Bhutto graduates from Harvard's Radcliffe College.

1976: Bhutto graduates from Oxford University.

April 4, 1979: Zulfikar Ali Bhutto is executed for the murder of a political opponent, two years after his ouster as prime minister in a military coup.

April 10, 1986: Benazir Bhutto returns from exile in London to lead the Pakistan Peoples Party, founded by her father.

December 1988: Bhutto, age 35, becomes the first female prime minister of a Muslim nation after winning parliamentary elections.

Aug. 6, 1990: President Ghulam Ishaq Khan dismisses Bhutto's government, citing corruption and a failure to control ethnic violence.

Oct. 19, 1993: Bhutto takes oath for a second term as prime minister.

1996: Bhutto's brother Murtaza dies in a gun battle with police in Karachi. Her brother Shahnawaz had died under mysterious circumstances in France a decade earlier.

Nov. 5, 1996: President Farooq Leghari dismisses Bhutto's second administration amid accusations of nepotism and undermining the justice system.

April 14, 1999: A court finds Bhutto guilty of corruption while she is out of the country. The conviction is later quashed, but Bhutto remains in exile.

Oct. 12, 1999: Gen. Pervez Musharraf, the head of the armed forces, seizes power from Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif in a bloodless coup.

Oct. 5, 2007: Musharraf signs an amnesty covering cases against Bhutto, opening the way for her return and a possible power-sharing agreement.

Oct. 18, 2007: Bhutto returns to Pakistan after more than eight years of exile. She narrowly escapes a suicide bombing that kills nearly 140 people during a homecoming procession in Karachi.

Nov. 9, 2007: Police throw barbed wire around Bhutto's house to keep her from speaking at a rally to protest Musharraf's imposition of emergency rule.

Nov. 13, 2007: Authorities put Bhutto under house arrest again. She urges Musharraf to resign.

Dec. 1, 2007: Bhutto launches her election campaign.

Dec. 27, 2007: Minutes after Bhutto addresses thousands of supporters in Rawalpindi, she and at least 20 others are killed when a gunman opens fire and a suicide bomb explodes.

Compiled from The Associated Press and NPR research