PAKISTAN: Pakistani security officials engage in final stages of attack against Islamists besieged in Islamabad's Red Mosque

Pakistani security officials engage in final stages of attack against Islamists besieged in Islamabad's Red Mosque. Islamist supporters stage protests in the capital Islamabad and the North West Frontier province to denounce authorities a day after the security forces killed more than 50 Islamist fighters in an attack on the mosque. Residents wait for information regarding relatives caught up in the fighting. Pakistani security forces secured a mosque and school complex in Islamabad on Wednesday (July 11), snuffing out the last pockets of resistance a day after an assault that killed a rebel cleric and more than 50 militants, as Islamist supporters demonstrated in protest of the government operation and relatives anxiously awaited news of loved ones caught up in the fighting. Many questions were unanswered including the final death toll and whether any women or children had been killed at the radical Lal Masjid, or Red Mosque. Soldiers were securing a headquarters and residential complex where hardline cleric Abdul Rashid Ghazi lived, said military spokesman Major-General Waheed Arshad. "Even in the morning, early morning, when the operation was going on to clear the living quarters, there was resistance at the time also, there was firing going on. And a short while back there was firing going on in which some people did suffer casualties from our side, and also from the side of the militants. So that is ongoing, and the operation is also ongoing," said Arshad. He said he had no report of women or children among the dead. Ghazi died in a hail of bullets in a last stand on Tuesday night (July 10). His body was being taken for burial in his home village in Punjab province, an Interior Ministry official said. Three militants were killed in an exchange of fire overnight, Arshad said. An occasional explosion rang out from the fortified mosque-school complex during the morning hours on Wedensday as troops destroyed booby-traps and mines. Heavy security was still in place around the compound with reporters kept back and a curfew in the neighbourhood. Eight members of the security forces were killed and 29 wounded in "Operation Silence", the codename for the final assault that raged from before dawn to after dusk. Heavy casualties, especially among women and children who were religious students based at the compound would be bad for President Pervez Musharraf, going through arguably the worst patch of a roller-coaster eight years in power. Elections are due later this year and the general, who came to power in a 1999 coup, is seeking a second five-year term. He is expected to address the nation on Wednesday (July 11) or Thursday (July 12). An estimate of more than 50 militants dead would rise, Arshad said, and the next planned stage of the operation includes ridding the complex of bodies. "This area needs to be very thoroughly cleared and sanitised, and that's the second phase of the operation which has just started. In this phase the law enforcing agencies, the security and the troops, will also gather the bodies inside the madrasa and the mosque complex. So this operation will take some time." No one knew how many people were in the complex when the assault began. More than 1,200 people left during a week-long standoff after clashes erupted on July 3. Estimates from officials on the number remaining had ranged from hundreds to 2,000. Arshad said the military, before the assault, had estimated 200 to 300 people there. Arshad said 86 people came out of the complex after the assault began, including women, children and militants. Dozens of residents gathered at relief agencies to try and discover the fate of loved ones caught up in the fighting. Relief agencies said they were trying to gather details on casualties but information was scarce. Many Pakistanis berated Musharraf for not clamping down sooner on the students who abducted policemen and kidnapped women they accused of being prostitutes. But self-exiled former prime minister Benazir Bhutto, who in the run-up to elections has been linked to a possible power-sharing deal with Musharraf, backed the government action. Newspapers were also supportive, saying the government should have acted sooner but in the end had no choice but to use force. Supporters of the six member parties forming the Islamist Parties Alliance took to the streets in the capital Islamabad and the restive North West Frontier Province on Wednesday (July 11) to protest against the Red mosque operation. Hundreds of protesters walked down the streets of Islamabad and Peshawar, the capital of the North West Frontier Province, waving Alliance flags and chanting anti-government slogans. Some protesters chanted "Musharraf is a killer." Others accused him of befriending the U.S. at the expense of his people's welfare, raising placards reading "Any friend of America is a traitor." The Red Mosque clerics had sought to impose strict Islamic law in the capital and incited followers, mostly drawn from the North West Frontier Province, to run a vigilante anti-vice campaign.

ITN Source | July 11, 2007

Tags:. .strict. .bhutto. .occasional. .islamists. .compound