President General Pervez Musharraf told militants barricaded in Lal Masjid on Saturday to surrender or die. “If they do not surrender so I am saying here today that they will be killed. They should not force us to use force. They should come out voluntarily, otherwise they will be killed,” Gen Musharraf told reporters while visiting flood-hit areas in Balochistan, in his first public comments on the deadly stand-off in Islamabad. He said that the hardline students holed up inside Lal Masjid for the past five days must immediately free women and children allegedly being held as human shields, or face death. “We’ve shown great patience because we don’t want people to be killed,” he said. “They should not think that we cannot do anything, or cannot kill them or expel them. The government has enough power and no one can stand before its might. Our concern is for children and women and we are showing lot of patience and restraint,” he added.
Gen Musharraf said some 1,200 to 1,300 women, children and young students had surrendered. “I appeal to those who are still inside to come out and surrender,” he said. He said the Lal Masjid students had defamed Islam, and caused great embarrassment for Pakistan internationally.