Siege Continues Around Islamabad's Red Mosque
By Benjamin Sand
Pakistani security forces are intensifying their operations outside the Red Mosque in Islamabad where radical clerics are refusing to surrender to government forces. Pakistani media report president Pervez Musharraf Saturday warned the mosque's leaders to either free hundreds of women and children still inside or be killed. VOA correspondent Benjamin Sand reports from the Pakistani capital.
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Militants in Pakistan mosque linked to Al-Qaeda: security officials
ISLAMABAD : Islamic militants from a group linked to Al-Qaeda and to the murder of the journalist Daniel Pearl are believed to be leading hold-outs at a Pakistani mosque, security officials said Sunday.
At least two commanders from the banned group Harkatul-Jihad-e-Islami, whose name means Movement of Islamic Holy War, are inside the besieged Red Mosque in Islamabad, the officials said on condition of anonymity.
"We believe there are militants from Harkatul-Jihad-e-Islami, which was involved in the Pearl murder. Based on intelligence we suspect that two commanders from the group are in there," one senior official told AFP.
"They have taken control and they are putting up fierce resistance."
The information was based on "intercepts" and other intelligence, the officials said, without naming the men.
But the militants are thought to be giving orders to the hundreds of radical students in the mosque, they said.
The government says women and children are being held as human shields, which the mosque's clerics deny.
"Our forces are holding back as long as it is possible to avoid the deaths of women and children," the security official said.
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30 women among 70 dead in Pakistan mosque: cleric
ISLAMABAD (AFP) - A Pakistani cleric said that around 70 students, including 30 women, had been killed in a siege at his mosque, but the government put the toll at 19.
"Some 70 students have been killed since the government launched the operation five days ago," Abdul Rashid Ghazi, the deputy leader of the Red Mosque, told AFP by telephone.
He said 30 of them were female students who had been buried inside the sprawling mosque compound and its adjoining womens' seminary, called Jamia Hafsa.
"We buried the women because we did not want postmortems to be conducted as they are un-Islamic," Ghazi said.
In other words, they can make up the numbers as they feel like...
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Brainwashed children plead to die as martyrs in Red Mosque siege
by Dean Nelson
SAIMA KHAN wants to die a martyr. Life is transient, she told her father in a telephone call last week, and the real glory is to sacrifice it for Allah. Her statement would be alarming at any age, but Saima is only 10.
As she spoke, rifle shots rang out, the acrid smell of tear gas drifted over Islamabad and hundreds of troops surrounded the pro-Taliban Red Mosque, a religious school complex in the heart of Pakistan’s capital where Saima was among hundreds of children being held as virtual hostages in a stand-off between militants and the government.
Saima and her 14-year-old sister, Asma, were embroiled in a struggle for the soul of Pakistan in which up to 70 militants died last week and more than 100 were injured, according to mosque officials.
Holed up inside the complex behind the lines of troops and razor wire, the children – many of them girls whose families had sent them to the mosque to receive a strict Islamic education – repeatedly rejected relatives’ entreaties to leave before a threatened army onslaught.
There was evidence that many had been brainwashed into a cult of martyrdom, and the authorities feared last night that some were being prepared to be suicide bombers. In barely eight weeks, Saima had been transformed from a religious but fun-loving girl to a jihadi, grimly craving martyrdom.
At the barricades, her father, Luftullah Khan, a shopkeeper, frantically pestered soldiers to let him rescue both his daughters. But when he got through to them on their mobile telephone, they said they preferred martyrdom to freedom.
“I spoke to my daughter. She said there was no food or water left. I tried to arrange a meeting, but she said, ‘We’re here; my dead body will be here. I will not leave my teachers’,” Khan said.
His bewilderment at her sudden transformation reflects that of a nation that can barely believe the events unfolding in the shadow of General Pervez Musharraf’s presidential palace.
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Ohhh I believe that such 'transformations' can happen in the time it takes me to snap my fingers...Islam destroys the "thinking for yourself" part of the brain...
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Hundreds killed in heavy shelling: mosque official
At least 335 students, besieged inside a mosque and seminary in Islamabad by the security forces for six days, were killed in overnight shelling, deputy head of the mosque Abdul Rashid Ghazi said Sunday.
Ghazi said that 310 female and 25 male students were killed in overnight army bombing of the compound of 'Lal Masjid' (red mosque) and seminary "Jamia Hafsa".
The army spokesman Major General Waheed Arshad denied the casualties claim and said the shelling was aimed at cresting holes in the compound walls to allow the hostage students to flee.
Ghazi said that roofs of two rooms collapsed on the girl students, who had taken shelters there.
The bombing was expected to blow up sections of the walls and make holes in the compound so that the students who had been taken hostages could escape, an army spokesman said.
The overnight shelling was the heaviest since the clashes started on Tuesday.
Fresh contingents of troops were called early Sunday for an expected major operation against the armed students and their leader, who have refused to surrender.
Ghazi renewed his rejection of government warnings to surrender and said he would prefer death over arrest.
The security forces fired shells at the building of seminary and mosque and the explosions were heard in areas seven kilometers from Islamabad and Rawalpindi.
TV channels reported that around 15 armored vehicles advanced from the rear side of the besieged building and opened fire, and the electricity of the areas near Lal Masjid was cut off.
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Pertinent Links:
1) Siege Continues Around Islamabad's Red Mosque
2) Militants in Pakistan mosque linked to Al-Qaeda: security officials
3) 30 women among 70 dead in Pakistan mosque: cleric
4) Brainwashed children plead to die as martyrs in Red Mosque siege
5) Hundreds killed in heavy shelling: mosque official
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