ISLAMABAD: An air force plane carrying the body of slain Pakistan Opposition leader Benazir Bhutto arrived in the southern city of Sukkur on Friday ahead of her funeral in her home town, party officials said.

Bhutto's body will be taken to her home town of Naudero in a helicopter, they said.

Her husband Asif Zardari, who had earlier flown from Dubai to Islamabad, and their three children travelled in the plane. They had a brief chance to see the body before the aircraft left Islamabad.

Bhutto, 54, is to be buried in the family's ancestral graveyard in Garhi Khuda Bakhsh near the town of Larkana around noon, they said.

Bhutto was assassinated in a gun and bomb attack that killed around 20 people as she left a party rally in the garrison city of Rawalpindi, near the capital Islamabad.

Bhutto, a two-time former premier, was spearheading her Pakistan People's Party campaign for January 8 general elections