Several thousand Pakistani Islamists rallied on Friday to denounce the government for ordering an army crackdown on a radical mosque in the capital, Islamabad.
Protests were held in several towns and cities across the country after Friday prayers but none was very big and there were no reports of trouble.
At least 75 supporters of hard-line clerics were killed in Tuesday’s commando assault on Islamabad’s Lal Masjid, or Red Mosque, which ended a week-long stand-off 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 of about 300 people in Lahore.
Protesters burned effigies of President Pervez Musharraf and United States President George Bush and shouted ”Long live the martyrs of Lal Masjid” and ”Musharraf Killer”.
Musharraf, in an address to the nation 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.
In Islamabad, an MMA deputy leader called on young people to protest, but he urged them not to carry guns, saying that would simply play into the hands of the government and its ally, the US.
”The Lal Masjid incident is the darkest chapter of Pakistan’s history,” deputy MMA leader Ghafoor Haideri told a congregation of about 200 people in another mosque in the capital.
Banners were strung up on the wall of the mosque where Haideri spoke, reading: ”Musharraf killer” and ”Musharraf is responsible for killing innocent children at Lal Masjid”.
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. — Reuters