Bhutto Family Feud Leads to Bloodshed : Pakistan: Police loyal to Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto open fire on a march led by her mother.

The feud among the Bhuttos, Pakistan’s first family, degenerated into bloodshed Wednesday when riot police loyal to Benazir, the prime minister, opened fire with guns and tear gas on a march led by her mother.

Witnesses said at least one young man was killed and four other people were injured in the clash in the town of Larkana, the ruling clan’s ancestral home in rural eastern Pakistan.

Nusrat Bhutto, 63, who with hundreds of sympathizers wanted to visit the tomb of her husband, passed out after inhaling some of the acrid gas but was not seriously hurt, witnesses said.

Both Bhutto women came to Larkana, 300 miles north of Karachi, to pay their respects on the 66th anniversary of the birth of Nusrat’s husband, the late Prime Minister Zulfikar Ali Bhutto.

“The day of celebration has been turned into a day of mourning,” the estranged mother of Pakistan’s prime minister told reporters. “I am very sad. I am very perturbed. This is not democracy; this is a police state.”

A Sind province official claimed that police fired only when the crowd, which carried clubs and sticks, captured a policeman and pummeled him.

For seven years, the mercurial and charismatic Bhutto ruled Pakistan. But he was toppled by the army in 1977 and hanged two years later. In the past several months, Bhutto’s widow and his 40-year-old daughter have become furious rivals keen on capturing the legacy and political machine left by the man known as Quaid-e-Awam (People’s Leader). Yet another Bhutto--Benazir’s kid brother, Murtaza--has taken his mother’s side.

The people fired on by police were marching in support of Nusrat Bhutto and the 39-year-old Murtaza, who is in jail on terrorism charges but is being touted by his mother as the legitimate leader of the Pakistan People’s Party.

“Murtaza is our leader! Murtaza is our hero!” they yelled. “God help Murtaza!”

Police fired tear gas and then assault rifles as the throng emerged from the family home in Larkana, where Nusrat lives, to escort her to Ali Bhutto’s grave about 20 miles out of town, witnesses said.

The stone walls of the Bhutto home were pockmarked with bullet holes. Police stopped Nusrat from leaving, forcing her car back at gunpoint into the family compound.

Witnesses said another column of several hundred marchers on their way to the Bhutto home were sprayed with tear gas by police.

Officials told reporters that more than 12,000 police officers were brought into Larkana to try to prevent the family dispute from kindling violence. They were deployed by the thousands around the Bhutto home and in the streets after midnight.

Benazir Bhutto wanted to prevent her brother’s supporters from attending the birthday ceremony for their father, so troops erected roadblocks and uncoiled barbed wire to block roads leading to the grave at Garhi Khuda Bakhsh.

The Bhuttos’ quarrel took center stage in Pakistani politics last month after Benazir engineered the ouster of her mother as chairwoman of the ruling PPP and got herself elected in her mother’s stead.

“I have been stabbed in the back,” Nusrat Bhutto protested. She says the post belongs by right to her son as the late Ali Bhutto’s male heir.

Murtaza and Benazir have not exchanged a word since he returned home after 16 years in self-imposed exile last November. He was promptly clapped in jail on his sister’s orders and now faces charges that he masterminded the hijacking of an airliner and an attack against the Pakistani navy.

A court in Karachi rejected his application for parole to go to his father’s grave.

In a brief morning visit, Benazir Bhutto called at the grave, prayed and draped a scarf over the tomb.