Pakistan govt warns armed militants holed up in radical mosque after 9 died in gunbattles.

Jul 4, 2007
The Associated Press

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan (AP) -- Armed militants holed up at a radical mosque in the Pakistani capital must surrender or face punitive action from security forces, a government minister warned Wednesday, a day after gunbattles left at least nine people dead.

The bloodshed has added to a sense of crisis in Pakistan, where President Gen. Pervez Musharraf already faces emboldened militants near the Afghan border and a pro-democracy movement triggered by his botched attempt to fire the country's chief justice.

After a meeting of top officials including Musharraf, deputy interior minister Zafar Warriach said the government had imposed an immediate curfew on the area around Islamabad's Lal Masjid, or Red Mosque.

"We ask them to surrender and lay down their arms. No action will be taken against those who do it, but if anyone displays weapons and comes out (of the mosque) he will be answered with bullets," Warriach said at an early morning news conference.

He set no deadline for the militant followers of the mosque's hardline clerics to lay down their weapons, but said authorities had finally run out of patience after a six-month standoff.

"The government has decided that those people from the madrassah who are defaming Pakistan and Islam will face an operation" by police and paramilitary troops massed nearby, Warriach said

Despite the curfew and a cease-fire announced earlier, sporadic gunfire rang out into the early hours of Tuesday near the mosque, which lies near a busy shopping area about 4 kilometers (2.5 miles) from the city's government district.

The violence dramatically deepened a standoff at the fortress-like mosque, whose hardline clerics have challenged the government by sending students from the mosque's madrassahs to kidnap alleged prostitutes and police in a Taliban-style anti-vice campaign.

On Tuesday, about a dozen gunmen had exchanged fire with security forces after a skirmish near the mosque in which paramilitary Rangers fired tear gas at crowds of male and female students bearing down on them.

Militant students also pelted two government buildings, including the Ministry of Environment, with rocks and set them ablaze, and torched a dozen cars in the ministry's lot.

Warriach said late Tuesday that nine people had died in the violence: four students, three civilians, one soldier and a journalist. However, clerics at the mosque said the toll was higher, according to a lawmaker who entered the mosque to mediate.

About 150 people were reported injured, most of them by tear gas fired by security forces.

Men brandishing assault rifles, pistols and molotov cocktails, some of them wearing gas-masks, were seen among about 200 people marauding around the red-walled, white-domed mosque, where sandbagged guard posts have been erected along its walls and on the roof.

Abdul Rashid Ghazi, the mosque's deputy leader, said Tuesday that the Rangers sparked the trouble by erecting barricades near the mosque.

When asked about the presence of armed students at his mosque, Ghazi said they "are our guards."

Authorities have been at loggerheads with the mosque over a land dispute and after its followers began a campaign to impose a harsh version of Islamic law in the capital.

Senior officials have tried to negotiate a settlement of their grievances.

However, the clerics have steadily raised the stakes with kidnappings and by issuing a fatwa, or religious edict, against a female minister for hugging a French skydiving instructor, and by threatening suicide attacks if security forces intervene.

Some accuse intelligence agencies of encouraging the crisis to justify a state of emergency and prolong military rule -- a conspiracy theory with considerable traction in Pakistan's intrigue-ridden politics.

Plans for the general, a close U.S. ally who seized power in a 1999 coup, to ask lawmakers for a new five-year term this fall are in doubt because of rising opposition.

Yet Musharraf's failure to crack down on the clerics' spreading fear in the capital has dented his credentials as a bulwark against extremism -- diminishing his worth to Washington, his key international backer.

Musharraf said Friday he was ready to raid the mosque, but warned that militants linked to al-Qaida had slipped inside and that the media would blame any bloodbath on the government.

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Associated Press Writers Denis Gray, Munir Ahmad and Sadaqat Jan in Islamabad, and Zia Khan in Lahore and Abdul Sattar in Quetta contributed to this report.

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