ISLAMABAD: The body of slain Baloch leader Nawab Akbar Khan Bugti was buried on Friday in his home town of Dera Bugti in Balochistan under Government supervision. Bugti's family, who did not take part in the funeral, said the military should have handed over his remains to them.

Two security forces personnel were killed outside Karachi during a country-wide strike called by the Opposition parties to protest Nawab Bugti's killing.

The strike closed down several cities in Pakistan. In Balochistan and the North-West Frontier Province, the shutdown was near total, while it was partial in Sind. Punjab was the least affected province.

Public transport came to a standstill as protesters barricaded roads and highways, in some places with burning tyres. There were stray incidents of stone throwing.

A shoot-out in a Baloch-dominated area of Karachi killed two personnel of the Pakistan Rangers. President Pervez Musharraf held a meeting of his corps commander in Rawalpindi to discuss the security situation in the country, including the unrest in Balochistan.

Quick funeral

A maulvi led the funeral at the Bugti family's ancestral graveyard in Dera Bugti. It was held in the morning quickly after a helicopter flew the body in a padlocked coffin to Dera Bugti from Kohlu, where army engineers are reported to have recovered it from the cave in which the 79-year-old leader was hiding during the August 26 military operation that killed him.

Television footage from the funeral showed a clutch of praying tribesmen surrounded by security personnel as the sealed coffin was lowered into the ground.

After the Government announced late on Thursday night that the body had been recovered, it invited not more than two family members to participate in the funeral. But the family said no one would attend, insisting that the Government hand over the body to them in Quetta, the provincial capital.

More questions

The funeral has raised more questions than it has settled. One of Nawab Bugti's sons told Geo TV that as the Government had buried a locked coffin, he was doubtful if it really contained his father's body. Only the maulvi leading the funeral was allowed to look inside.

The district coordination officer of Dera Bugti, its seniormost civilian official, exhibited a watch and a pair of spectacles said to have belonged to the late Nawab Bugti. He said the body had to be buried at once as it was in an advanced stage of decay. The DCO said that if any one had doubts, the identity of the body could be established through a DNA test.

Speculation continued also over when the Government had actually recovered the body. Sherry Rehman, a Pakistan People's Party leader, alleged that the Government had it as early as August 28. Liaquat Baloch, a leader of the Muttahida-Majlis-e-Amal, a coalition of religious parties, which had also given the strike call, said that by not handing over the remains of Nawab Bugti to his family, the Government acted against the tenets of Islam and against all norms of humane conduct.

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