Troops storm Pakistan mosque compound
ZARAR KHAN, Associated Press Writer
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070710/ap_on_re_as/pakistan_radical_mosque
ISLAMABAD, Pakistan - Troops stormed the compound of Islamabad’s Red Mosque on Tuesday, prompting a fierce firefight with militants accused of holding scores of hostages, officials said. At least two soldiers were killed, but there was no official word on casualties among the mosque’s defenders.
Amid the sounds of rolling explosions, commandos attacked from three directions and quickly cleared the ground floor of the mosque, army spokesman Gen. Waheed Arshad said. Some 20 children who rushed toward the advancing troops were brought to safety, he said.
Militants armed with guns, grenades and gasoline bombs were in the basement of the mosque as well as in an adjoining religious school and were putting up “tough resistance,” Arshad told a news conference.
“Those who surrender will be arrested, but the others will be treated as combatants and killed,” he said.
The assault began minutes after a delegation led by a former prime minister left the area declaring that efforts to negotiate a peaceful end to a week-old seige had failed.
Clashes this month between security forces and supporters of the mosque’s hardline clerics prompted the siege. The religious extremists had been trying to impose Taliban-style morality in the capital through a six-month campaign of kidnappings and threats. Prior to Tuesday’s assault, at least 24 people had been killed in and around the mosque.
The assault was signaled by blasts and gunfire. Reporters saw more than 40 ambulances approaching the area along with trucks carrying extra soldiers.
Mohammed Ramzan, an official at Islamabad’s main Pakistan Institute of Medical Sciences hospital, said it had received eight wounded soldiers early Tuesday and that two had died of their injuries.
There was no official word on any casualties among people inside the mosque compound, but rebel leader Abdul Rashid Ghazi told the private Geo TV network that his mother had been wounded by gunfire.
“The government is using full force. This is naked aggression,” he said. “My martyrdom is certain now.”
He said that about 30 militants were resisting security forces but were only armed with 14 AK-47 assault rifles.
Tuesday attack followed a botched commando raid on the high-walled mosque compound over the weekend.
On Monday, President Gen. Pervez Musharraf assigned ex-premier Chaudhry Shujaat Hussain to try and negotiate a peaceful end to the standoff.
But Hussain and a delegation of Islamic clerics returned crestfallen from the mosque after about nine hours of talks with rebel leader Abdul Rashid Ghazi via loudspeakers and cell phones.
“We offered him a lot, but he wasn’t ready to come on our terms,” Hussain told reporters waiting at the edge of the army cordon shortly before dawn.
Several loud explosions boomed over the city just as the vexed looking delegates were getting into their cars and sporadic shooting was also heard.
Later, Deputy Information Minister Tariq Azim said lives would be lost in the assault.
“We have to do it with a heavy heart. After spending a full day in negotiations to save innocent lives, the operation has started,” Azim said. “I hope the waiting ambulances will remain empty, but we fear that lives will be lost.”
Musharraf sent in the army to surround the compound after the gunbattles broke out July 3.
The siege has given the neighborhood the look of a war zone, with troops manning machine guns behind sandbagged posts and from the top of armored vehicles. Helicopters circle overhead.
On Sunday, the army released an aerial photograph showing how it had blasted several holes in the walls of the compound to help students escape, seeking to disprove claims from Ghazi, who has given a string of phone interviews to reporters, that the mosque had been badly damaged.
Only two students escaped after the raid, which left a top army commando dead.
Maqir Abbasi went to the barricades around the mosque seeking news of his 22-year-old sister, Yasmin.
“Whenever I hear the sounds of bullets, I feel that my sister has been harmed. We appeal to the government, we appeal to Ghazi, we appeal to everyone. I want my sister back,” he said.
Officials claim that members of banned militant groups linked to al-Qaida are inside the mosque. Some radical clerics in Pakistan’s wild western border region have called for revenge against security forces because of the siege.
On Monday, some 20,000 tribesmen, including hundreds of masked militants wielding assault rifles, protested in the frontier region of Bajur, led by Maulana Faqir Mohammed, a wanted cleric suspected of ties to al-Qaida’s No. 2 leader, Ayman al-Zawahri.
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Associated Press writers Zarar Khan and Sadaqat Jan in Islamabad and Habibullah Khan in Khar contributed to this report.