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MIRAN SHAH, Pakistan - Pro-Taliban militants seized control of a shrine in northwestern Pakistan and renamed it after Islamabad's Red Mosque, while 10 people died in the latest violence near the Afghan border, officials said Monday. About 70 pro-Taliban militants occupied the shrine of renowned Pashtun freedom fighter Sahib Turangzai and its accompanying mosque in the town of Lakarai in Mohmand tribal region on Sunday, a spokesman for the militants and a local government official said. The militants declared their support for the radical leaders of the Red Mosque that was stormed by Pakistan's army this month after its clerics...

The woman who took part in the ISIS-inspired San Bernardino massacre is linked to her native country's most notorious radical mosque, American officials believe. Sources have told Daily Mail Online that US officials handed over information to their Pakistani counterparts about links between Tashfeen Malik and the Red Mosque in Islamabad. The mosque is infamous for its links to violence and authorities in Pakistan are now considering taking action against its preacher, Maulana Abdul Aziz, after the disclosures by US officials. It is unclear currently how law enforcement and intelligence agencies in the US have connected Malik to the mosque.

Note: Photo included. SNIPPET: "Pakistani security forces have detained a senior terrorist leader behind suicide attacks in the capital who has links to the leader of the Lal Masjid, or Red Mosque. A terrorist commander known as Fidaullah was arrested on May 27 along with Shah Abdul Aziz, a former member of parliament. The arrests took place outside the home of Maulana Abdullah Aziz, the former leader of the Red Mosque who was released from prison in mid-April on $2,500 bail." SNIPPET: "Fidaullah was a recruiter and handler of suicide bombers; he reportedly recruited from religious schools in Islamabad and...

“Around 600 students of Jamia Hafsa and Jamia Fareedia have not returned to their homes after the Lal Masjid operation. These are the people called ‘missing students’ and they are hiding in madrassas and mosques in and around the two cities Islamabad and Rawalpindi. They are walking bombs and are determined to blow themselves up any time, anywhere,” said a source directly involved in the ongoing investigation of suicide blasts in the country.Lal Masjid prayer leader Maulana Abdul Aziz said that five to six hundred students of the two madrassas had been trained, equipped and brainwashed to carry out suicide...

ALARM - the islamist ones again in the Red mosque with Islamabad ISLAMABAD - Islamist militants occupied Friday the Rouge mosque of Islamabad which had just reopened two weeks after the attack strapping of the Pakistani army counters the fundamentalist ones armed which had been cut off there, indicated a journalist of AFP on the spot and organizes it.

'I Hoped To Be A Glorious Martyr' A woman who was inside Islamabad's Red Mosque when it was stormed by Pakistani troops on 10 July has given the BBC one of the first accounts of the final hours of the siege. Unwilling to be named, the survivor said she was not held hostage by militants inside. More than 100 people died in the army operation - she was one of only 30 women to walk out alive after soldiers went in. Following are excerpts from the interview with Rafia Riaz of the BBC's Urdu service. ..."They asked me to come...

AL-QAEDA’S leadership secretly directed the Islamic militants whose armed revolt at the Red Mosque in Islamabad ended last week with more than 100 deaths after it was stormed by the Pakistan army. According to senior intelligence officials, the troops who finally took control discovered letters from Osama Bin Laden’s deputy, Ayman al-Zawahiri. They were written to Abdul Rashid Ghazi and Abdul Aziz, the brothers who ran the mosque and adjacent madrasah. Government sources said up to 18 foreign fighters � including Uzbeks, Egyptians and several Afghans � had arrived weeks before the final shootout and set up firing ranges to...

Excerpt - ISLAMABAD, Pakistan: Thousands of troops were deployed to Pakistan's northwestern frontier to try to dissuade outlawed Islamic militants from launching a holy war against the government for its bloody attack on a radical mosque, military officials said Saturday. Troops were sent Friday to at least five areas of North West Frontier Province, which borders Afghanistan and where militant groups are increasingly active, a military officer said. "With help from local tribal elders, we are trying to ensure that militants lay down their arms, and stop issuing calls for jihad against the government," said a senior military official who...

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan - A radical cleric whose besieged mosque sought to impose strict Islamic morality on the Pakistani capital was killed Tuesday after refusing to respond to troops who demanded his surrender, officials said. About 50 militants and eight soldiers died when the military stormed the sprawling Red Mosque compound. Abdul Rashid Ghazi, the public face of the pro-Taliban mosque that challenged the government's writ in Islamabad, had vowed to die rather than give himself up. An army official said Ghazi had received bullet wounds and when he was told to surrender, he gave no reply. Commandos then fired another...

Attack of the red Mosque: “of the corpses everywhere” ISLAMABAD - “Corpses” strew the basement with the fundamentalist red Mosque of Islamabad where an attack was in progress Tuesday in order to dislodge of islamist marked to retain hostages, a source inside the building, questioned by telephone by AFP indicated. “There is no contact between us because nobody can leave the parts and the basements. There are corpses everywhere”, indicated a man answering one of the many portable telephones of Abdul Rashid Ghazi, chief of the irreducible ones. Ghazi is still in life but his/her mother died, specified the...

ISLAMABAD: Eight “high value terrorists” wanted by Pakistan and other countries are holed up inside Lal Masjid, while another was killed by security forces in the ongoing operation, Religious Affairs Minister Ejazul Haq said on Sunday. “Nine suspected terrorists said to be far more dangerous and harmful than Al Qaeda and Taliban operatives were hiding inside the mosque compound,” Haq told a press conference here. Haq said that the militants and not Abdul Rashid Ghazi, Lal Masjid’s deputy chief cleric, were controlling the mosque. “The militants are holding children and Ghazi hostage,” he said. He said that about 500 male...

Islamabad, July 8 (PTI): Battling the radicals holed up in Lal Masjid, Pakistan security forces are gearing up to take on another set of well entrenched extremists led by a cleric, in a tribal area, who has issued a decree asking people to attack anyone supporting the crackdown on the Islamabad mosque. The Government has decided to launch a massive operation against the banned Tehrik-e-Nifaz-e-Shariat Mohammadi (TNSM) leader Maulana Fazalullah in the tribal Malakand agency of the North West Frontier Province (NWFP), media reports said here. Fazalullah is a close associate of Lal Masjid cleric Abdul Aziz, arrested while trying...

ISLAMABAD (Reuters) - A Pakistani cleric holed up in an Islamabad mosque said on Thursday he and his student followers were willing to surrender, after three days of violence in which 19 people have died. But authorities rejected his offer, saying his attempt to attach conditions was unacceptable and insisting he release women and children human shields. Violence erupted outside the Red Mosque, or Lal Masjid, in the capital on Tuesday after a months-long stand-off between the authorities and the Taliban-supporting clerics and their thousands of followers, some of them armed. There were intermittent clashes and several loud explosions through...

Updated at 1630 PST ISLAMABAD: A full-fledged commando operation has been launched at Lal mosque, the sources said. Intense cross firing between the Law Enforcing agencies and students of Lal mosque has been started and the explosions have rocked the Islamabad. The commando operation has been codenamed as “silence operation.” The commandoes and the Rangers have also taken control of the office of Environment ministry beside the Lal mosque. Meanwhile, Chairing a high level meeting, president General Pervez Musharraf has directed the Law Enforcing authorities involved in Lal mosque operation to display maximum restraint to ensure safe evacuation of the...

Excerpt - ISLAMABAD, July 5 (Reuters) - Loud explosions were heard on Thursday from the vicinity of a radical Pakistani mosque being besieged by security forces but the cause was not immediately clear, witnesses said. About eight explosions were followed by some gunfire but it was not clear if security forces had launched an assault on the Lal Masjid, or Red Mosque, where hardline religious students are defying a government order to surrender. The explosions were followed by an announcement broadcast from security force loudspeakers outside the mosque, calling on the students to surrender, a witness said. "All people in...

Islamabad, 4 July (AKI) - (Syed Saleem Shahzad) - The leader of a radical mosque in Islamabad besieged by Pakistani security forces has been captured as he tried to escape the complex wearing a burqa. Maulana Abdul Aziz was arrested as he tried to leave the Lal Masjid (Red Mosque) amid a crowd of women wearing the black burqas favoured by the Taliban. Reports say that his wife Umme Hasan has also been arrested. However, Abdul Rasheed Ghazi, the other hardline brother leading the mosque's months-long challenge to central government authority, is believed to have remained in the complex with...

Pakistan warns mosque militants The mosque's male and female students took part in the stand-off Pakistan has ordered militant students barricaded in a mosque in Islamabad to lay down their arms, after at least 10 people died in clashes at the site.A curfew has been imposed around the Lal Masjid (Red Mosque) and electricity to the complex has been cut off. Pakistan's interior ministry has accused mosque leaders of treachery and of "tarnishing the image of Islam". Armed students at the mosque and linked seminaries have defied authorities for months in a campaign for Islamic law. The mosque and...

ISLAMABAD (updated on: July 04, 2007, 03:49 PST): Pakistani security forces fought fierce gun battles with students of Lal mosque in Islamabad on Tuesday after a lengthy standoff exploded into violence, leaving 12 people dead and 140 hurt. Clerics from the radical Lal Masjid, or Red Mosque, vowed suicide attacks to avenge the 'blood of martyrs' after the day-long clashes. The victims included a soldier, a journalist, at least four students and several bystanders. The shootout in the heart of the leafy capital followed months of tension over the mosque's challenges to the authority of President Pervez Musharraf, most recently...

Shooting at Islamabad’s Lal Masjid; 10 including one soldier killed ISLAMABAD, July 3 (AP) - Security forces clashed with militants outside Lal Masjid in Islamabad, triggering gunfire that left one soldier dead and dozens of students and troops injured. (According to a private tv channel nine others including eight Lal Masjid students had been killed when last reports came in). The students later set fire to two government buildings, including the Ministry of Environment. They first tore down a section of the wall around the three-story ministry building near the mosque and pelted it with rocks. About four hours...