Lal Masjid: Militants snub cleric surrender plea

The violence brought to a head a six-month standoff between the Musharraf regime and top cleric Maulana Abdul Aziz, who has challenged the President with a drive to impose Shariah law in the city. The government, keen to avoid a bloodbath that would damage Musharraf’s already embattled administration, said it would not storm the mosque so long as women and children remained inside.

However, several explosions rocked the area during a period of intense gunfire before dusk on Thursday, sending a plume of black smoke into the sky. A leader inside the mosque accused troops of firing several mortar rounds that had killed 27 female students.

Aziz, who was captured Wednesday evening as he tried to slip through the army cordon in a woman’s burqa and high heels, said on state television that as many as 700 women and about 250 men remained inside the complex, armed with more than a dozen AK-47 rifles.

“If they can get out quietly they should go, or they can surrender if they want to,” Aziz said. “I saw that the siege is very intense…Our companions will not be able to stay for long.”

But the cleric’s brother, Abdul Rashid Ghazi, remained inside the mosque with followers and rejected calls for an unconditional surrender. Speaking by phone to Pakistan’s Geo news channel, Ghazi demanded a guarantee that they would not be arrested and for authorities to let him move his mother and sister-in-law out of the complex to safety. He denied claims that he was using young students as human shields.

Deputy Information Minister Tariq Azim said some of the more than 1,100 supporters who had surrendered told officials that Ghazi had retreated to a cellar with 20 female “hostages” and that the holdouts had “large quantities of automatic weapons.”