U.N. panel visits city where Bhutto died

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan, July 17 (UPI) -- The U.N. team investigating the 2007 assassination of Pakistan's former prime minister Benazir Bhutto visited the city Friday where she was killed.

"This was a very important visit for us and we spent a good amount of time there trying to understand more clearly and more fully what happened on that fateful day," Ambassador Heraldo Munoz of Chile, leader of the three-member Commission of Inquiry, said during a news conference in Islamabad after returning from Rawalpindi.

Munoz and his team also met with senior police officers who were at the scene of the assassination or involved in the investigation, the United Nations said in a news release. The team met with officials who investigated an assassination attempt on Bhutto in Karachi, as well as several ministers and senior officials in the Pakistani government.

He added U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon has said the work of the commission, set up at the request of the Pakistani government, is considered among the United Nation's top priorities.

"We are very much aware that this is no ordinary assignment," Munoz said. "We have no preconceived ideas about what the outcome of our work will be."

The commission began its work July 1 and is expected to submit its report to Ban in six months.