Pakistani security forces on Friday demolished parts of a besieged mosque where hardcore militants have been holed up for the last four days as they prepared for a final assault to flush out the extremists, said officials.
| "Mahmoud! Bring up the dozers!" |
Hundreds of military and paramilitary soldiers deployed around the mosque resumed heavy fighting after a ceasefire lasting several hours during which authorities had relaxed a curfew imposed for Friday prayers. The troops carried out controlled blasts to make gaps in the building housing mainly female students, giving them a chance to flee.
"Red wire,so!... Green wire, so!... Okay, ever'body back!... Ready?... [KABOOM!]"
"Oh. So that's how it's done!" |
'Our soldiers provided cover fire to the commandos who planted the explosive devices near the front part of Jamia Hafsa building,' a military officer told Aaj news channel.
| "Right betwixt the eyes! Nice cover fire, there, Ahmed!" |
The renewed fighting had killed three of his followers, hardline cleric of Lal Masjid, Red Mosque, Abdul Rashid Ghazi alleged.
"Dead! Gone! Cavorting with their 72 virgins!"
"Dudn't look like they had much fun departing this vale of tears, does it?"
"I'm pretty sure they're a lot happier now."
"That hadda hurt. Briefly." |
Recurrent gunfire with a few deafening explosions hit the surrounded compound early Friday with security forces using 'dummy mortars' and machine-gun fire to pressure the hardcore Islamists into surrendering. But the students remained defiant after the government dismissed their offer to surrender in return for safe passage on Thursday evening.
| "Hrarrr! Youse'll never take us alive, coppers!" |
'We can never turn ourselves in. We will accept martyrdom but will not surrender,' Ghazi told the Geo tv on telephone.
| "Hokay. Mahmoud! Bring up the artillery!" |
Around 450 students wrote down their wills after offering Friday prayers, sources inside the mosque told the news channel.
| "... and to Mustafa, I leave my collection of jihadi videos..." |
'Our entire struggle and sacrifices were for the enforcement of Islamic law in the country,' a student, Salman, said in his will. 'We hope that the people of Pakistan will carry forward our efforts for Islamic justice system.'
| Yeah, sure. They'll hop right on it as soon as you're dead. |
Unconfirmed reports from inside the mosque suggested that there were some 300 men and hundreds of women and children in the heavily fortified compound that houses the Lal Masjid and its Jamia Hafsa seminary for girls.
| Y'don't get much more Islamically heroic than that, unless you're shooting kiddies at Beslan. |
Security forces surrounding the compound have so far not launched a full-scale attack after President Pervez Musharraf ordered them to keep collateral damage to the minimum.
"Omar, what's 'collateral damage'?"
"Innocent bystanders, I think." |
At least 19 deaths have been confirmed officially in the siege, but witnesses and other independent observers say the number of casualties is running into several dozens. The mosque administration claimed that at least 30 young female students were killed in Friday's pre-dawn mortar attack on the seminary.
Officials said the militants, who included rebels from banned religious outfits, were using the women and children as human shields, but Ghazi denied the allegations.
'There are no militants belonging to jihadi organizations inside the mosque,' he told Aaj tv.
Amid repeated calls for surrender, 1,221 people including 426 women left the mosque, while some 45 men were captured by the Pakistan Rangers paramilitary forces as they tried to escape after scaling the mosque's walls.
| "Yeah. That wuz where all the jihadis went. They wuz just passin' through." |
Ghazi's brother and Lal Masjid chief cleric, Maulana Abdul Aziz, was also arrested Wednesday night by security forces when he tried to flee disguised as a veiled woman with his wife and her students from the Jamia Hafsa seminary. In a bizarre appearance on state-run TV channel the next morning, he asked his pupils to surrender because they could not resist the force assembled against them much longer.
| Of course it was "bizarre." Most things in Pakistan are "bizarre." |
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