Lal Masjid cleared, 73 bodies found

Maj Gen Waheed Arshad said the compound was still being combed for mines, booby traps and other weaponry. “There are no more militants inside,” said Arshad.

Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz told reporters that no bodies of women and children had been found inside the sprawling complex and said the probability of such bodies being found during the “mopping up” was low.

Over 50 militants and 10 soldiers were killed and 33 wounded in the final, 35-hour assault by the elite Special Services Group which began early on Tuesday, the army said.

In another significant development, Pakistan police have detained a militant leader wanted by India who was roped in by the authorities to hold talks with slain radical cleric Abdul Rashid Gazi. “Fazlur Rehman Khalil has been taken into protective custody at his residence-cum-madrasa in Islamabad in view of the security situation,” Daily Times quoted officials as saying.

Khalil, who figured in India’s list of most wanted terrorists, was a close aide of Gazi’s and was used by the Pakistan government’s negotiators to hold talks with the radical cleric on Monday. Police said he has been taken into protective custody to avoid the backlash following Gazi’s death.

They said Farooq Kashmiri, another militant commander called in from Pakistan Occupied Kashmir, was already in the Pakistan government’s custody.

Meanwhile, a legal row has broken out over Gazi’s body. Gazi’s sister Ayesha met Acting Chief Justice Rana Bhagwan Das to seek his intervention to order the government to let the family bury Gazi’s in the boys’ madrasa in Islamabad. Justice Das asked her to file a petition after which he referred it to a two-judge bench.

The petition was opposed by Interior Ministry officials who said Gazi’s body was flown to the his hometown Rojhan Mazari by helicopter at the instance of elder brother Abdul Aziz, who was arrested trying to flee the mosque in a burqa.

Later in the day, the bench declined to order the government to permit Gazi’s burial at the madrasa in Islamabad next to that of his father Maulana Abdullah. But it asked the government to permit his relatives to attend the burial.

It has been officially announced that Gazi’s mother Lal Bibi also died in the operation. However, his wife Humaira Ghazi and Aziz’s wife Umme-e-Hassan and his daughter Hamna Abdullah were “rescued”.