Bhutto book says she knew her possible killers

New York: Pakistani opposition leader Benazir Bhutto returned home knowing the names and cell phone numbers of her possible assassins, she wrote in a book finished just days before her murder at a December election rally.

Bhutto was killed after a bomb and gun attack at a rally on December 27.

Bhutto wrote in 'Reconciliation: Islam, Democracy and the West', released worldwide on Tuesday, that Pakistani officials told her four suicide bomber squads had been sent by Taliban warlord Baitullah Mehsud, Osama Bin Laden's son Hamza, and two militant groups to kill her.

"I had actually received from a sympathetic Muslim foreign government the names and cell numbers of designated assassins," said Bhutto, who accused Pakistan President Pervez Musharraf of not doing enough to protect her or investigate the threats.

Bhutto, 54, who twice served as prime minister of Pakistan, said she sent a letter to Musharraf before returning to her homeland in October in which she identified people in the Pakistani intelligence service whom she said would be responsible for her assassination.

"I told him if I was assassinated by the militants it would be due to the sympathisers of the militants in his regime, who I suspected wanted to eliminate me and remove the threat I posed to their grip on power," Bhutto wrote in the 318-page book published by HarperCollins.

Bhutto accused Pakistan President Pervez Musharraf of not doing enough to protect her or investigate the threats.

"When I returned, I did not know whether I would live or die," wrote the mother of three. "I said farewell to my children, husband, mother, staff, friends and family not knowing whether I would ever see their faces again. "

Bhutto's father, Pakistan's first popularly elected prime minister, was hanged by the military in the late 1970s.