ISLAMABAD, Pakistan -- A prosecutor investigating the assassination of former Pakistani Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto was shot dead in a “targeted killing” in Islamabad on Friday, police sources said.

Several attackers on motorcycles and in a taxi opened fire on Chaudhry Zulfikar’s car as he drove to work at about 7 a.m. local time (10 p.m. ET on Thursday), the sources said.

His guard, a paramilitary soldier provided by the government, and a woman on the side of the road were both shot and wounded in the attack. The woman was also hit by Zulfikar’s white Toyota when it veered off the road.

Security expert Amir Rana told Reuters that Zulfikar was probably a marked man because he had been prosecuting militants who were jailed in connection with Bhutto's death or other cases.

Bhutto was killed in a gun and suicide bomb attack carried out by a 15-year-old boy after an election rally in the city of Rawalpindi, just weeks after she returned to Pakistan from years in self-imposed exile in a bid to reclaim office.

Bhutto was a fierce critic of Pakistan's Taliban and Islamist groups that had been supported by some elements of Pakistan's military.

Her death was one of the most shocking events in the country's turbulent history, and had a similar impact on the nation as the 1963 assassination of President John F. Kennedy in the United States.

Speculation has lingered that Bhutto was the victim of a plot by allies of General Pervez Musharraf, the president at the time, who did not want her to come to power.

Zulfikar was also the prosecutor investigating the 2008 attacks on India's commercial capital, Mumbai, in which 166 people were killed. India said militants based in Pakistan were behind the three-day rampage.

The killing of the prosecutor comes days after a Pakistani court put Musharraf on a 14-day judicial remand for charges of failing to provide adequate security for Bhutto before her assassination.

The former army chief, who has always denied responsibility for Bhutto's death, returned to Pakistan in March after nearly four years of self-imposed exile to contest the May 11 general election. But he has since been banned from politics for life.

In 2010, a United Nations Commission of Inquiry report concluded security arrangements for Bhutto were “fatally insufficient and ineffective” and that the investigation of her death had been “prejudiced,” describing it as a whitewash.

Slideshow: Pakistan: A nation in turmoil

Str / AFP - Getty Images

Images of daily life, political pursuits, religious rites and deadly violence.

Launch slideshow

In a statement issued about the report, the U.N. said the government “was quick to blame local Taliban commander Baitullah Mehsud and al Qaeda although Ms. Bhutto’s foes potentially included elements from the establishment itself.”

“A range of government officials failed profoundly in their efforts first to protect Ms. Bhutto and second to investigate with vigor all those responsible for her murder, not only in the execution of the attack, but also in its conception, planning and financing,” the commission said.

“Responsibility for Ms. Bhutto’s security on the day of her assassination rested with the federal government, the government of Punjab and the Rawalpindi District Police,” it added. “None of these entities took necessary measures to respond to the extraordinary, fresh and urgent security risks that they knew she faced.”

Reuters contributed to this report.

Related:

• Pakistanis honor 'martyred queen' Benazir Bhutto
• An A to Z guide to the Islamic Republic of 'Banistan'
• Full NBC News coverage of Pakistan

This story was originally published on Fri May 3, 2013 5:08 AM EDT

Rizwan Tabassum / AFP - Getty Images

Crowds gather outside the Bhutto family mausoleum in Garhi Khuda Bakhsh on Thursday.

GARHI KHUDA BAKHSH, Pakistan --  In a country where ethnicity is more important than nationalism, little is celebrated collectively other than the odd cricket victory, and most fallen heroes are forgotten or berated, the commemoration of assassinated Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto has gone the other direction and is verging on deification.

Since Bhutto’s death on Dec. 27, 2007, the region’s deep obsession with mysticism and the occult has evolved to incorporate her legacy.

“I’m here because the ‘martyred queen’ was there for us,” said Mustafa, a police officer from Bhutto’s nearby hometown of Larkana who volunteered to oversee security during a rally last week at a massive Bhutto mausoleum, a modern rendition of the Taj Mahal.

As Mustafa talked, electricity seemed to fill what is now Pakistan's most politicized tomb, with nearly a quarter of a million followers thronging to Bhutto’s ancestral graveyard. It was Pakistan’s State of the Union, Woodstock and Thanksgiving Day Parade, all rolled into one.

Wajahat S. Khan / NBC News

The Bhutto family mausoleum in Garhi Dera Bakhsh in the southern province of Sindh, Pakistan.

“I have this honor to serve in uniform because she bequeathed it,” the 29-year-old Mustafa told NBC News, as house music remixed with Sufi poetry and Bhutto’s own speeches rang through state-of-the-art speakers in a walled-off compound the size of a dozen football fields. 

The posthumous granting of titular royalty upon Bhutto is hardly surprising. Bhutto’s brand of populism raged in the days leading to the main event -- a speech on Thursday by her son, 24-year old Bilawal Bhutto Zardari, which propelled him into the rough and tumble mainstream of Pakistani politics.

An A to Z guide to the Islamic Republic of 'Banistan'

Considered Pakistan’s most important political dynasty, the Bhuttos have crafted a critical brand over nearly five decades: Ivy Leaguers with feudal holdings; anti-military progressives with Islamic leanings; minority Sindhis who have challenged the Punjabi majority; loud and proud Shiites in an increasingly tense and sectarian Sunni country -- a modern cross between the Kennedys, the Tudors and the landed rajas of the subcontinent.

Bhutto's assassination just reinforced the existing cult of martyrdom widely followed by many in her constituency in the Sindh province and throughout Pakistan, according to Raza Rumi, who directs policy for The Jinnah Institute, one of Pakistan's leading and more liberal think tanks.

Rizwan Tabassum / AFP - Getty Images

President Asif Ali Zardari, the widower of assassinated former premier Benazir Bhutto, embraces his son Bilawal Bhutto Zardari outside the Bhutto family mausoleum in Garhi Khuda Bakhsh, Pakistan, on Thursday.

"The legends and myths of famous Muslim sacrifices through the centuries have set the parameter for this religious/magical/political framework that now dominates her narrative," he said. 

Hashish, whiskey
At last week's rally, the smell of hashish and whiskey whiffed from dark corners, mixing exotically with the aroma of the langar, a makeshift community cafeteria designed to feed thousands. But it was the combination of mysticism and politics that make the growing movement surrounding the Bhutto legacy unique.  

Full NBC News coverage of Pakistan

Dilawar, 28, and Samina, 20, who had trekked from neighboring Dadu with their 2-year-old child, swore about the magical powers of “Bibi Shaheed,” which translates from Urdu as “Martyred Lady.”

“It was this annual ziarat and dua (pilgrimage and prayers) to her grave that made our baby come into the world. Our conditions got better. That’s why we come every year,” Dilawar told NBC News.

7 aid workers shot and killed in Pakistan

Speaker after speaker took to the 40-feet high stage protected by bulletproof glass. “One Zardari outweighs them all!” the crowd chanted.

The reference was for the man who had just landed via helicopter, the current president and Bhutto’s widower, Asif Ali Zardari, who has managed to keep her party -- Pakistan’s most popular -- intact and in command, but barely, of the nation’s divided and war-torn polity.

'Modern political goddess'
"[During the] last five years, the death anniversary of Bhutto has turned out to be a bigger event than many actual mainstream religious events across Pakistan," said Rumi, the policy analyst. "That's phenomenal politics. The invocation of Sufi legends with a modern political goddess have altered the spiritual consciousness of the rural population." 

Slideshow: Pakistan: A nation in turmoil

Muhammed Muheisen / AP

Images of daily life, political pursuits, religious rites and deadly violence.

Launch slideshow

The credit for sustaining the Bhutto brand through the institutionalization of this commemorative rally goes to Zardari. In a country accustomed to military coups, he has almost completing the full term of an elected civilian government for the first time since the Pakistan's independence 65 years ago.

Can social media propel 'rock star' politician Imran Khan to power in Pakistan?

While Zardari is considered one of Pakistan's sharpest political operatives, he is less popular than Bhutto was, and spent the years between 1996 to 2004 in jail on corruption charges that he says were politically motivated. But as he grooms his son to take over the country's largest political party, he continues to be locked in a power struggle with the judiciary as well as the so-called deep state, local parlance for the military establishment.

At the rally, which his government branded “The Day of Martyrdom," the hundreds of thousands greeted Zardari with a roar of approval as he pledged free elections in a country unaccustomed to them.

More world stories from NBC News:

• Drug-resistant malaria threatens deadly global 'nightmare'
• From alcohol to kites: An A to Z guide to the Islamic Republic of 'Banistan'
• UK police: Attackers dressed as Oompa Loompas beat man
• Vatican launches swipe-card security system
• US sailors sue Japan's TEPCO for post-quake radiation exposure

Follow World News from NBCNews.com on Twitter and Facebook