Dozens of people are feared dead in two large explosions near to where former Pakistan Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto was being welcomed home.

Bhutto’s truck had just passed when the blasts happened in Karachi, just hours after she ended her eight-year exile.

Hundreds of thousands of people had lined the route to see her. Militants linked to al Qaeda, angered by her support for the US war on terrorism, had threatened to assassinate her.

Benazir Bhutto, the Pakistani opposition leader and former prime minister, arrived in Pakistan this afternoon, ending her eight-year exile in a return that is expected to reconfigure the country’s already unsettled political landscape.

On the flight from Dubai, the emirate where she had lived for much of the last decade in self-imposed exile, Ms. Bhutto was accompanied by chanting supporters, and she moved through the plane talking to reporters and to admirers. When asked how she felt, she said, “Very excited, very happy, very proud, a tremendous sense of responsibility.”

She added: “I think the time has come for democracy. If we want to save Pakistan. we have to have democracy.”

Her return is expected to have a significant impact on Pakistan’s politics. Not least, it is certain to invigorate the opposition to Pakistan’s military leader, Gen. Pervez Musharraf, who was re-elected president by national and provincial assemblies on Oct. 6, but still faces constitutional challenges to his eligibility.