By Robert Birsel

ISLAMABAD, Jan 1 (Reuters) - Despite mounting disbelief, Pakistan's government stuck to its position on Tuesday that Benazir Bhutto was killed when she cracked her skull on the lever on a sunroof of her car during a gun and bomb attack.

The opposition leader's party says she was shot, and most Pakistanis agree.

Video footage surfaced on Monday showing a clean-cut young man firing a pistol at Bhutto from a distance of about 10 feet (3 metres), her white shawl appearing to move, perhaps as a bullet struck, and her dropping back into the armoured vehicle.

The raging controversy about exactly how she was killed as she left an election rally in Rawalpindi last Thursday has virtually eclipsed the question of who was behind the attack.

Just over 24 hours after Bhutto's death the Interior Ministry said three shots had been fired moments before a suicide bomber struck but neither bullets nor blast fragments had killed her.

The ministry's spokesman said that Bhutto had been killed when she ducked, the explosion forced her head against a lever jutting from the sunroof, and the blow fractured her skull.

Ministers of the caretaker government met senior editors on Monday and apologised for the "crude" way the Interior Ministry spokesman had announced the government conclusion.

But caretaker Interior Minister Hamid Nawaz said the government was not changing its stance.

"His remarks were a little crude (but) there is no change in the factual position," that Bhutto's head struck the lever, Nawaz told Reuters.

"That is what the present facts are indicating but maybe tomorrow something new will come up once the investigation people get additional facts," he said.

Asked about the video footage showing the man shooting at Bhutto, he said: "The investigation would consider this also."

NO AUTOPSY

While the bomb blast moments later killed more than 20 people, none of Bhutto's companions inside her vehicle was hurt.

The controversy about how she actually died has only fuelled conspiracy theories in a country where many people see the hand of feared security agencies or powerful foreign countries behind virtually every political crisis.

The government has blamed an al Qaeda-linked militant based on the Afghan border, Baitullah Mehsud, for the attack but many Pakistanis believe Bhutto's old enemies, perhaps from within the powerful security agencies, were involved.

Former intelligence chief Asad Durrani said the government's rush to explain Bhutto's death was "completely unnecessary" and would not end accusations of a security failure.

"In their eagerness to find something to justify themselves they sometimes concoct things that come back to haunt them."

Doctors who examined Bhutto said no bullet or shrapnel showed up on an X-ray. The single wound on her head did not look like a bullet wound but appeared to indicate a forceful blow by some heavy object, one said.

Doctors released an inconclusive report saying the cause of death was "an open head injury with depressed skull fracture, leading to cardiopulmonary arrest".

A senior hospital source said the doctors had been under intense pressure from all sides over the cause of death.

No autopsy had been performed, at the request of her family, the government said.

Bhutto's husband, Asif Ali Zardari, confirmed that, saying an autopsy had not been necessary when the cause of death was so obviously a bullet. He also expressed scepticism about how an autopsy would have been done.

"I have lived here long enough to know how and where an autopsy would have been conducted," he told reporters.

Bhutto's party has called for a U.N. investigation into her assassination but the government has said Pakistani investigators were capable of conducting the inquiry. A four-member Pakistani police team and a separate judicial team are investigating. (Additional reporting by Simon Cameron-Moore; editing by Roger Crabb)

AlertNet news is provided by