Islamabad, January 20: A teenaged boy arrested Friday has told investigators that he was the next in line to kill former prime minister Benazir Bhutto if the Dec 27 attempt had failed, a media report Sunday said.

"He appears to be part of the group that had planned the assassination, but not directly involved in it," Dawn quoted an official in Peshawar as saying.

Eighteen-year-old Aitzaz Shah, a native of Battal in Mansehra district of the North West Frontier Province (NFWP), used to live and study in Karachi. Aitzaz told interrogators that he had been recruited by a cleric in Karachi and was sent to South Waziristan to train as a suicide bomber.

He said that he got training at Makeen in South Waziristan and knew about the group that had planned Bhutto's assassination. The Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP) leader died in a bomb and gun attack after an election rally in Rawalpindi.

"Aitzaz, who was arrested along with another man identified as Sher Zaman, was said to be cooperating with his interrogators," Dawn said.

The official said that Sher Zaman, who was Aitzaz's handler, was the "real catch".

A police official said that Aitzaz had even identified Bilal, the man who had executed the assassination of Bhutto and then blew himself up.

Bilal was a member of the Al Badr outfit. The arrested teen claimed that he was the backup for Bilal, whose facilitator was Akram. The police are now hunting for Akram.

Police said that the two suspects were arrested while driving into the NWFP city of Dera Ismail Khan in a car. The police also recovered explosives from the car.

"The boy seems to be implicating militant commander Baitullah Mehsud in Benazir's assassination," the official said.

He said the two would be subjected to further interrogation to find more about Benazir's murder and other terrorist acts in the country. "So far, what he has said is very sketchy but we would know more as we speak to him again," he said.

However, a spokesman for Mehsud denied Aitzaz had any link with his group.

"We have denied our involvement in Benazir's assassination before and are strongly denying this again. We are not involved in Benazir's murder," Maulvi Omar told Dawn newspaper.

"The CIA had made a similar claim and now the police claim seems to be a continuation of the same conspiracy," he added.