KARACHI, Pakistan — A former prime minister, Benazir Bhutto, warned yesterday that the Taliban and Al Qaeda have gained ground in Pakistan, making her first public appearance since narrowly escaping a suicide assassination attempt that killed 136 people.

But she said the bombing could unite her and other forces opposed to extremism, including military ruler President Musharraf.

“He’s been the victim of assassination attacks and so have we,” Bhutto told a small group of journalists inside her heavily guarded Karachi residence. “I think certainly it will unite all those who are against extremism.”

Ms. Bhutto’s return from an eight-year exile follows negotiations with General Musharraf that could bring the longtime rivals together after January elections and see the corruption charges against her vanish.

Ms. Bhutto, who is vying to become prime minister for a third time, has kept up her strong rhetoric against military rule and accuses elements within General Musharraf’s administration and security services of plotting to kill her. She said military rule had only fueled militancy, and warned that mujahedeen forces were turning their attention from Afghanistan to Pakistan.

“The Taliban has regrouped and according to intelligence network estimates Al Qaeda is also regrouping. It’s become clear that dictatorship is not working, that it’s actually making the situation more chaotic and anarchic,” she said.

But Ms. Bhutto’s criticism has been tempered by conciliatory comments, suggesting that she views an alliance with General Musharraf — a key ally of America in its war on terrorism — as her political destiny, one with the backing of Western governments. Ms. Bhutto returned to Pakistan on Thursday, but her jubilant greeting by more than 150,000 supporters was shattered by the bombing just before midnight.

Using a device laden with nuts, bolts and ball bearings, the attacker — yet to be identified — killed about 50 of her party’s security detail, at least 18 police escorting her and scores of supporters and bystanders.

Three days after the carnage, the former premier popped out of her fortified home to visit some of the wounded at a Karachi hospital, then visited a shrine in one of the poorest quarters of the volatile city.

Hundreds of supporters chanted “Prime Minister Benazir!” as she left after the 15-minute hospital visit, guarded by armed police. She also held prayers of mourning at her house with about 100 women, many of them widowed in Thursday’s attack, while thousands of her supporters gathered for a prayer service elsewhere in Karachi. Some shouted for revenge but the cleric leading the prayers appealed for calm. Hundreds more gathered in Peshawar and Lahore.

Ms. Bhutto conceded she felt a little weary but appeared upbeat when she met reporters in a lounge adorned with photos of polo horses and a pencil sketch of her husband Asif Ali Zardari, who still lives abroad.

She said she had been lucky to escape injury in the attack as she was at the back of the interior of her armored truck when the bomb went off, but found her ear bleeding the morning after.

Ms. Bhutto brushed off criticism that it was a wrong to stage the rally — designed to show Pakistan and the world that she remains a powerful political force in her homeland despite her years in exile following her two corruption-tainted governments. By her own admission, she had received intelligence before her return to Pakistan that four Al Qaeda and Taliban suicide bombing squads were out to kill her.