Pakistani security forces were securing the last parts of a mosque and school complex on Wednesday, a day after an assault that killed a rebel cleric, more than 50 Islamist fighters and eight soldiers.
Many questions were unanswered including the final death toll and whether any women or children had been killed at the radical Lal Masjid, or Red Mosque, in Islamabad.
”The remaining parts of the complex are being cleared, the headquarters and residential complex of Ghazi and the other militants who were living there. Hopefully it will be finished very soon,” said military spokesperson Major-General Waheed Arshad.
He also said he had no reports of women or children among the dead.
Hardline cleric Abdul Rashid Ghazi died in a hail of bullets, along with hardcore militants he had surrounded himself with, in a last stand on Tuesday night.
An occasional explosion rang out through the night from the mosque-school complex and several were heard shortly after dawn.
Three militants were killed in an exchange of fire overnight but there were no further reports of clashes, Arshad said.
Heavy security was still in place around the compound with reporters kept back and a curfew in the neighbourhood.
High numbers of casualties, especially among women and children who were religious students based at the compound would be bad for President Pervez Musharraf, going through arguably the worst patch of a roller-coaster eight years in power.
Elections are due later this year and the general, who came to power in a 1999 coup, is seeking a second five-year term.
Eight members of the security forces were killed and 29 wounded in ”Operation Silence”, the codename for the final assault that raged from before dawn to after dusk.
Toll to rise
A figure of 50 militants dead would rise, Arshad said.
”There were more who were killed but we can only talk once the operation is over.”
Regarding possible deaths of women or children, he said: ”Not to my knowledge. No women and children have been killed.”
”That was one of the major plans of our strategy, a step-by-step approach to ensure no women and children were killed.”
No one knew how many people were in the complex when the assault began. More than 1 200 people left during a week-long stand-off after clashes erupted on July 3.
Estimates from officials on the number remaining had ranged from hundreds to 2 000. Arshad said the military, before the assault, had estimated 200 to 300 people there.
”We’re going to comb the area and then we’ll see what we find.”
Arshad said 86 people came out of the complex after the assault began, including women, children and militants.
Young women were among the most fervent supporters of the Taliban-style movement led by Lal Masjid’s two cleric brothers, Ghazi and Abdul Aziz. The latter was caught escaping a week ago, disguised in a woman’s black burqa.
The clerics had sought to impose strict Islamic law in the capital and incited followers, most drawn from restive North West Frontier Province, to run a vigilante anti-vice campaign.
Gangs of burqa-clad, stave-wielding young women had become a symbol of the movement’s challenge to the state.
Many Pakistanis berated Musharraf for not clamping down sooner on the students who kidnapped women they accused of being prostitutes and abducted policemen.
But self-exiled former prime minister Benazir Bhutto, who in the run-up to elections has been linked to a possible power-sharing deal with Musharraf, backed the government action. – Reuters