ISLAMABAD, 12 July 2007 — Troops cleared the capital’s Red Mosque of all militants yesterday, ending two days of fierce street battles and an eight-day siege. The army said it counted the bodies of 73 suspected militants but found no corpses of women and children, although seven or eight of the bodies had been burned beyond recognition, apparently by the militants’ own exploded petrol bombs.
Some 106 people have been killed overall since the violence began. They include 10 soldiers, one police ranger and several civilians who died in the crossfire of the initial street fighting last week.
Commandos killed the final handful of rebels who fought to the death in tunnels and bunkers beneath the living quarters of their hard-line chief, pro-Taleban cleric Abdul Rashid Ghazi, who was shot dead late Tuesday.
“The first phase of the operation is over. There are no more militants left inside,” Pakistan Army spokesman Maj. Gen. Waheed Arshad said at the end of 36 hours of fighting.
“Seventy-three bodies have been recovered. There maybe a few more which may be found in the debris. We don’t expect there will be many,” he said. “We have handed them (the bodies) to the civilian authorities.”Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz told reporters that no bodies of women and children had been found inside the sprawling complex and the probability that such bodies would be found during the clearing 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. Another 1,300 people, around two-thirds of them women, fled earlier in the standoff. Officials said earlier estimates of the number left when the raid started appeared to have been overstated.
“The operation is over. Everybody who was inside is out,” Aziz said.
More than 50 militants and 10 soldiers were killed and 33 wounded during the final assault by the elite Special Services Group, which began in the early hours of Tuesday, the army said. 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. The final hours of the operation inside the compound, which included the mosque and a women’s madrasa, involved troops moving room to room in basements, blowing up foxholes where militants had been entrenched, an army officer said.
Relatives of young women, men and children who had been inside yesterday waited behind army barricades around the mosque and inquired at morgues or a sports stadium where authorities set up an information center for those seeking missing loved ones.
“I am looking for my son who was studying at the madrasa, but I don’t know whether he is alive,” said Jan Mohammed, 42, whose son Mohammed Khan could not come out of the mosque during the siege. He was among about 100 parents who were gathered at the sports stadium.
Ghazi, 43, the public face of the mosque and its deputy leader, said before he was killed in the fighting that he and his followers would rather die than surrender and hoped his death would spark an Islamic revolution in Pakistan.
Ghazi’s body was found in the basement of the religious school after a fierce gunbattle involving militants, senior Interior Ministry official Brig. Javed Iqbal Cheema said.
Cheema said Ghazi’s body has been transported for burial to his native village of Rojhan in southwestern Pakistan, along with that of his mother and two other unidentified people. His brother, Abdul Aziz, the mosque’s chief who was arrested trying to escape from the mosque last week, will be allowed to attend the funeral. Authorities took an unknown number into custody, while others, mostly young students, have returned to their homes. The casualties at the Red Mosque could further turn public opinion against President Gen. Pervez Musharraf, who already faces a backlash for his bungled attempts to fire the country’s chief justice.
Musharraf was set to address the nation today about the crisis and a new strategy to combat extremism.
The US State Department praised Pakistan’s “responsible” decision to storm the mosque, saying the militants had ample time to surrender, while President George W. Bush hailed Musharraf as a strong ally. Following several fiery anti-government protests Tuesday, about 500 people chanting “Death to Musharraf” rallied for an hour in the northwest frontier city of Peshawar yesterday.
“This (mosque attack) is part of our government’s action against religious elements to please America,” said Shabbir Khan, a lawmaker at the demonstration.
— With input from agencies
