After hearing about the assassination of former Pakistani Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto, local Pakistanis immediately started calling family and friends to find out what was going on.

“They were very afraid,” said Mahboob Ahmed, who works in the IT department at Kansas University. “They are waiting to see what happens next.” His in-laws live in Lahore, in southeastern Pakistan, and told Ahmed that within hours of Bhutto’s death Thursday, the city of approximately 10 million people had virtually shut down.

Rauf Arif, a Fulbright scholar at KU and a journalist, said he was concerned for his family and country, and also wanted to be covering the story.

Bhutto’s death “is like an assassination of our hopes,” Arif said. “I wish that I was there, and at the same time my heart is crying for my country.”

Ahmed said because Bhutto already had been targeted in a suicide bombing Oct. 18 upon her return to Pakistan from exile, her slaying didn’t come as a complete shock.

“She gambled on her life,” he said.

But now, the prospects for peace and democracy in Pakistan don’t look good, Ahmed said.

“It has derailed the country back into uncertainty,” he said.

Bhutto was killed after a rally for the Jan. 8 parliamentary elections. After her death was announced, rioting broke out across Pakistan.

Some blamed Bhutto’s death on President Pervez Musharraf for not providing security, but Musharraf blamed Islamic extremists.

Condolences from leaders poured in from around the world along with warnings about the threat of terrorism.

“This is a terrible loss to her supporters, the people of Pakistan and for democracy,” said U.S. Sen. Sam Brownback, R-Kan.

U.S. Sen. Pat Roberts, R-Kan., said al-Qaida and the Taliban must be considered suspects in the assassination.

“Terrorists plan and use such attacks to encourage chaos, instability and to put governments at risk,” Roberts said.

He said if order were not restored quickly, “the government of President Musharraf may be at risk as well as cooperation with the United States.”

Ahmed said there are many elements within Pakistan that could have been responsible for Bhutto’s killing.

And both he and Arif said that the Jan. 8 elections should be postponed.

Arif said he hoped that order will prevail because he didn’t want to see violence used to justify a military crackdown in the country.