At least 58 dead in Pakistan mosque raid

At least 58 dead in Pakistan mosque raid
By Farhan Bokhari in Islamabad and agencies
Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2007
Published: July 10 2007 08:30 | Last updated: July 10 2007 11:06


Pakistan’s military said eight soldiers and at least 50 militants had been killed in continuing clashes on Tuesday after the country’s security forces launched a pre-dawn raid on a compound housing a radical mosque at the centre of a week-long standoff.

Troops were continuing to fight their way through the Red Mosque compound more than 10 hours after launching the 4am local time raid as armed militants appeared to be preparing to make a final stand in basements throughout the complex.

UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon told a news conference in Brussels he was “very concerned” about the situation, and appealed for a peaceful solution.

”I am very much concerned about this ongoing situation in Pakistan and I hope sincerely that all these issues, that differences of opinion, positions, should be resolved through dialogue in peaceful means.”

Citing concerns about the country’s deteriorating security environment and the risk of fiscal slippage, S&P cut the outlook on Pakistan’s B-plus rating to stable from positive.

“There is intense engagement with the militants at three or four locations”, Major General Waheed Arshad, chief spokesman of Pakistan’s armed forces, told reporters. “Militants are taking positions in almost every room, they’re fighting from room to room, they have positions in the basement, on the stairs.”

He said there were more than 70 rooms and the basements in the sprawling mosque-school complex, and the militants were armed with automatic weapons and rocket-propelled grenades.

Gen Arshad said the troops had been ordered to take charge of the Lal Masjid, or Red Mosque, and an adjoining women’s religious school and wipe out militants inside.

The raid came after last-ditch talks failed to reach an agreement with militants holding an estimated 150 hostages inside the compound, according to Pakistani officials.

Officials said at least 24 women had emerged from the complex since the fighting had begun as well as some 30 children.

The Red Mosque, or Lal Masjid, has been a centre of militancy for years, known for its support for Afghanistan’s Taliban and opposition to Gen Pervez Musharraf, Pakistan’s president, and his backing for the United States. But its leaders and supporters have grown increasingly bold in recent months and become the centre of a debate over what some see as the growing “talibanisation” of cities like Islamabad.

Tuesday’s operation began just minutes after Chaudhary Shujaat Hussain, a former prime minister designated as the government’s chief negotiator, announced that talks that had lasted for over eleven hours through the night had failed to resolve the standoff.

“I have never been so disappointed,” Mr Hussain told reporters as he left with a group of Islamic clergymen who had come from around the country to help with negotiations.

According to a Pakistani intelligence official, the negotiations broke down when Maulana Abdul Rashid Ghazi, senior cleric of the mosque, demanded immunity from prosecution for not just himself and his family members, but also a group of militants, which could include some foreigners. “They were seeking immunity for all militants and these may have included foreigners,” said the official.

On Sunday, Ijaz ul Haq, Pakistan’s minister for religious affairs said that militants inside the mosque included some hardline Islamic militants believed to be involved in the unsuccessful assassination plot of Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz in 2004. Mr Haq claimed the body of a militant killed in crossfire near the mosque had been identified as a suspect in the attempt against Mr Aziz.

Shortly after the military operation began on Tuesday, Mr Ghazi said in an interview with GEO TV by mobile phone that the military action was taken to please the US, an oft-repeated claim from Islamists against Pakistan’s pro-US regime. “They (the government) wanted me brought before authority. I will much rather stand up and fight for justice,” he said, as gunfire boomed around the mosque complex.

The latest standoff began July 3 after clashes between security forces and militants in the mosque.

But tensions have been high since January when female Islamists seized a municipal children’s library located next door to the seminary in protest against the government’s decision to demolish mosques built on illegally acquired state land in Islamabad.

In March, female Islamists kidnapped three women, alleging they were running a brothel. The next month, Islamists from the mosque threatened to dispatch suicide bombers if the government stormed the complex.

Tensions rose further in June when the Islamists kidnapped six Chinese women and a Chinese man from a massage parlour, accusing them of operating a brothel. The group was freed 17 hours later following threats from the government to storm the mosque and the seminary.

Pakistan officials repeatedly expressed reluctance over the past week about storming the complex in view of the presence of children and women inside who could get caught in the crossfire. There are still no firm estimates of the number of people inside, with officials putting the number at 200 to more than 1,000.