A day after former Pakistani prime minister Benazir Bhutto was buried in her family's mausoleum, the cause of her death remains hotly disputed.

The Pakistani government maintains her head was slammed against her vehicle by the blast from a bomb, the BBC reported, but allies still claim she died from bullet wounds.

Bhutto's Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP) has also rejected the government claims that a Taliban commander linked to al-Qaeda was behind the assassination of the former PM.

Baitullah Mehsud, the Taliban commander in question, is suspected of plotting Thursday's suicide attack that killed Bhutto, the Pakistani interior ministry said, but Mehsud denied the claim.

The government "is trying to divert the investigations into Bhutto's killing," Bhutto's spokesman Farhatullah Babar told Bloomberg. "Mehsud had already denied he planned to assassinate Bhutto."

With two weeks left before polls that are due to restore democratic rule to the country after a eight years of military rule by Pervez Musharraf, rioting has erupted throughout the country, killing at least 38 and raising a large question mark over the elections.

Nawaz Sharif, one of Bhutto's political rivals and former PM, has already said his party would boycott them and it remains unclear whether PPP will follow suit.

Musharraf, who was recently elected president and vowed to make way for a democratically-elected government, has not yet given an indication whether the polls will go ahead as scheduled on January 8.

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