-♻RetweetBloody Mosque Battle Ends
Wed, Jul 11, 2007 at 11:30:33 am PDT
With more than 80 people dead, the fighting is finally over at the Red Mosque in Islamabad.
ISLAMABAD, Pakistan - Commandos cleared the warren-like Red Mosque complex of rebel fighters Wednesday, ending a fierce eight-day siege and street battles that left more than 80 dead, and the government warned it would not tolerate militancy in any of Pakistan’s thousands of religious schools.
Maj. Gen. Waheed Arshad said the compound was still being combed for mines, booby traps and other weaponry. “The first phase of the operation is over. There are no more militants left inside,” Arshad said in a telephone interview.Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz told reporters that no bodies of women and children had been found inside the sprawling complex and said the probability such bodies would be found during the “mopping up” operation was low. “The major group of women was all together and came out all together,” he said, referring to 27 women and three children who emerged from the mosque Tuesday. ...
More than 50 militants and 10 soldiers were killed and 33 wounded in the final, 35-hour assault by the elite Special Services Group which began early Tuesday, the army said. The dead including the mosque’s pro-Taliban cleric Abdul Rashid Ghazi.
The commandos went in after unsuccessful attempts to get the mosque’s militants to surrender to a weeklong siege mounted by the government following deadly street clashes with armed supporters of the mosque on July 3.
The extremists had been using the mosque as a base to send out radicalized students to enforce their version of Islamic morality, including abducting alleged prostitutes and trying to “re-educate” them at the compound in the heart of Pakistan’s capital.
Frank says:
