ISLAMABAD, 19 August 2004 — Police yesterday raided a madrasa in search of six clerics who had issued a fatwa (religious edict) against army operations in South Waziristan to flush out Al-Qaeda militants.

The raid, by an estimated 1,000 policemen, followed a tip-off that the six wanted men were hiding in Jamia Faridia, located in a posh residential area of the capital.

“The premises were thoroughly searched without encountering any resistance but none of the wanted clerics was found,” a police officer said.

The raid was the third on seminaries in the capital in two days. A mosque and a madrasa attached to it were also raided on Tuesday. “We are searching for the clerics who issued the fatwa against the army operation and have since then disappeared,” an Interior Ministry official said.

The clerics, among them a prayer leader at Lal Masjid, Islamabad’s oldest mosque, have eluded arrest since issuing the edict in March, declaring that the soldiers killed during anti-terror operations in the tribal region did not deserve an Islamic burial.

A sedition case was initiated by the police against the clerics but they disappeared to escape arrest.

The fatwa came days after a major military offensive in remote South Waziristan tribal district in March during which the army said it killed more than 80 militants, losing 46 soldiers.

The city’s main Lal Mosque is run by a pro-Taleban party Jamiat Ulema-e-Islam, part of the powerful Muttahida Majlis-e-Amal religious alliance, which rules North West Frontier Province and shares power in southwestern Balochistan province, both bordering Afghanistan.

Pakistani authorities have rounded up some 63 militants, including 12 foreigners, since mid July during a major crackdown against Al-Qaeda network and its local supporters, Interior Minister Faisal Saleh Hayat said.

Among those arrested are some of the top operatives of Osama Bin Laden’s network including Al-Qaeda’s Pakistani computer whiz Naeem Noor Khan and Tanzanian Ahmad Khalfan Ghailani, who was indicted in the 1998 bombings of US embassies in East Africa.