Scores Killed As Pakistani Commandos Storm Mosque

By Griff Witte
Washington Post Foreign Service
Tuesday, July 10, 2007; 6:26 AM

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan, July 10 -- Pakistani commandos stormed the Red Mosque at dawn Tuesday expecting to quickly subdue militants who had laid siege to the complex for eight days. But after more than 10 hours, dozens were dead, intense room-to-room fighting continued and the elite government fighters were meeting stiff resistance.

Commandos breached the compound within an hour of the operation's start. Loud explosions could be heard around the mosque all morning and into the afternoon, and a thick plume of smoke rose above the site, as extremists who had sequestered themselves in the compound's basement used automatic weapons, rocket launchers and grenades to try to fend off the assault from the highly trained government troops. By midday, militants were firing from the mosque's minarets as well.

At least eight commandos and 50 others -- most believed to be militants, but some likely civilians -- had been killed by 1 p.m., a military spokesman said. Dozens more were injured.

Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf gave the go-ahead for the raid after last-minute negotiations with the militants broke down. For days, military officials had said they could defeat the militants within an hour if told to do so. When they launched the operation before dawn this morning, they said it might take as many as three or four hours. Both predictions proved very wrong.

"It will take some more time," said Maj. Gen. Waheed Arshad, a military spokesman, speaking over the noise of sporadic explosions and gunfire. "The militants were fully prepared. They were well armed and well trained."

Seventy percent of the complex had been cleared of extremists as of 9 a.m., Arshad said, and commandos, sweeping room by room, were approaching an area where women and children were thought to be held.

Fierce room-to-room fighting continued hours later inside a large complex that is set back from the mosque itself.

Hospitals were cordoned off from the media. But a source at a hospital that was treating civilians said the staff was handling dozens of casualties, some of them women. Security forces picked up 20 children who fled as the fighting began, while ambulances raced to and from the scene.

Hundreds of people were believed to be in the complex at the time of the raid. The government said the fighters were holding women and children inside.

"They are using the children as human shields," Arshad said.

The raid came a day after Musharraf's government sent a high-level delegation to hold talks with the mosque's radical cleric, Abdul Rashid Ghazi, despite earlier pronouncements that negotiations were not an option.

Ghazi spoke with a Pakistani television station as the raid began and blamed the government for the breakdown of the negotiations. "I'm about to die," he said, "but I will fight until my last."

When another TV station later reached Ghazi by telephone, he shouted that commandos were entering his room and then hung up, the station reported.

Ghazi's whereabouts remained unknown Tuesday afternoon. Arshad said he had no information on whether Ghazi had been killed or captured and noted that he could be hiding in the part of the complex that remained unsearched.

The mosque was damaged in the raid, but Arshad said it remained structurally intact.

The government and the mosque's pro-Taliban leadership had been locked in a standoff for months, as students from a madrassa, or religious school, affiliated with the mosque abducted alleged prostitutes and threatened music store owners. The tension erupted last Tuesday with a deadly street clash. At least 24 people had been killed before the raid, though the toll might have been far higher because it was unclear how many inside the mosque compound had died.

Musharraf, who also heads the army, had held off on authorizing a full-fledged assault on the mosque because of concerns that such an operation could result in mass casualties. While most Pakistanis do not sympathize with Ghazi and his followers, there seemed to be little public appetite for a bloody final confrontation.

Monday morning, security forces stood ready to launch a raid after a top commando was shot dead by the radicals over the weekend. But guns fell silent later in the day, as the delegation of government officials and religious leaders spoke with Ghazi first by loudspeaker and then by cellphone. The talks continued late into the night. After the talks ended, a top government official headed to Musharraf's house to brief him on the negotiations.

Earlier in the evening, Information Minister Mohammad Ali Durrani said the government was speaking with Ghazi for "humanitarian" reasons to try to get as many women and children out of the mosque as possible.

Ghazi had said that he wanted to be martyred and that he would not surrender without a guarantee of safe passage from the mosque and immunity from prosecution. Asked Monday night whether Ghazi's demands were being considered, Durrani said, "We're discussing all possible options."

Top government officials had been asserting for days that Ghazi and his followers would have to surrender unconditionally to avoid a military assault by the thousands of security troops who had surrounded the mosque. On Sunday, the government reported that internationally known terrorists were hiding in the mosque and that talks were out of the question.

But by midday Monday, the government had softened its stance. During a meeting, religious leaders warned Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz that there was a potential for civil war in Pakistan if the siege was not resolved peacefully. Some of those leaders were later appointed to join the delegation that spoke with Ghazi for several hours Monday night. The government refused to let the delegates enter the mosque because it said parents who had gone in earlier to retrieve their children had been taken hostage.

On the streets near the mosque Monday, sentiment was divided. Residents of the area -- a mix of upscale private homes and run-down public housing -- had been living in a war zone for a week. Firing raged around them day and night. When they tried to leave their homes, soldiers wielding assault rifles barked at them to get back inside. Electricity and gas had been cut off for much of the time, and the residents had been given only brief breaks in the curfew to buy food and medicine.

But Waqar Ahmed, 25, a student who lives in the area, said he would welcome potentially prolonged negotiations if that was what it would take to end the crisis peacefully. "Islam is a religion that is spread with peace, not by force," he said. "Both sides have to realize there has to be negotiation so the problem is resolved. The whole world is looking at this."

A few blocks closer to the mosque, Sajid Hussain Malik was in no mood for the standoff to continue. His family of four, he said, had not been able to sleep for a week because the intense firing rattled the windows and kept them awake.

"The government should attack at once. Let's finish it," said Malik, a government worker. "We're suffering too much."

Special correspondent Shahzad Khurram contributed to this report.