Speaking to about 25,000 supporters near her ancestral home in the southern town of Larkana, she also renewed accusations the government had done nothing to stop militant violence.

“They always try to stop democratic forces but don’t make any effort to check extremists, terrorists and fanatics,” she told a rally at a cricket stadium, two days after a suicide bomber killed nearly 50 worshippers in a mosque.

Pakistan has seen a surge in violence this year with more than 400 people killed in suicide bomb attacks across the country in recent months.

On Sunday, a suicide bomber killed four soldiers and five civilians in an attack on a military convoy in the Swat valley in the northwest of the country, police said.

Bhutto said President Pervez Musharraf had spoken of the need to reform religious schools, or madrasas, but had done nothing. She said she respected genuine religious schools.

“Then there are the political madrasas, the political madrasas that teach their pupils how to make bombs, how to use rifles and how to kill women, children and the elderly.”

“Who they are who tell children to carry out bombing on Eid al-Adha,” she said, referring to the attack on Friday in the northwestern town of Charsadda.