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Mosque assault slammed
13/07/2007 21:09 - (SA)
Islamabad - Several thousand Pakistani Islamists rallied on Friday to denounce the government fo ordering an army crackdown on a radical mosque in Islamabad.
At least 75 supporters of hardline clerics were killed in
Tuesday's commando assault on Islamabad's Red Mosque, which ended a week-long standoff between militants and security forces. Ten soldiers were also killed.
"This chapter has not ended here. The bloodshed at Lal Masjid will lead to an Islamist revolution in Pakistan," Liaqat Baluch, central leader of the Muttahida Majlis-e-Amal (MMA) alliance of religious parties, told a rally in Lahore.
Accumulated an arsenal of weapons
Protesters burned effigies of President Pervez Musharraf
and US President George Bush and shouted "Long live the
martyrs of Lal Masjid" and "Musharraf Killer".
Musharraf on Thursday spoke of his resolve to "eliminate terrorism and extremism from every nook and corner".
Lal Masjid cleric Abdul Rashid Ghazi, who led his religious
students on a drive to impose strict Islamic rule on the
capital, was also killed on Tuesday along with hardcore militants who had accumulated an arsenal of weapons and
explosives in the complex.
The army said of the 75 people killed in the assault on the
mosque-religious school complex, 19 were burned beyond
recognition and could have been men, women or children.
In the city of Multan, a cleric and member of an alliance
of madrasas said the crackdown boded ill for all madrasas.
Bomb attacks targeting security forces
"It was part of a conspiracy against madrasas," Qari Hanif
Jallandari told a rally. "They will launch crackdowns against any seminary on the pretext of terrorism."
The storming of the mosque has intensified anti-government
feelings in the northwest, particularly in tribal regions on the Afghan border.
Nearly 30 people were killed in bomb attacks targeting
security forces in the northwest in just over a week, three
Chinese were shot on Sunday, and protesters ransacked offices
and supplies of Western aid agencies.
Four of the bomb blasts have been suicide attacks,
including two on Thursday, that killed seven people, three of
them police.
Additional reporting by Imtiaz Shah in Karachi and Asim
Tanveer in Multan)
- Reuters
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