Security forces in final push to clear Lal Masjid

Islamabad, July 10: More than 50 militants and eight soldiers were killed as security forces launched a massive operation at the crack of dawn today to evict radicals holed up inside the Lal Masjid complex on the eighth day of the crisis which became a source of major embarrassment for the Pervez Musharraf regime.

At least eight security personnel, including an Army Captain, were also killed and 15 injured in Operation 'Silence', launched by the Pakistan army in conjunction with the paramilitary Rangers and the police, to clear the mosque of the radicals after talks between the government negogiator and firebrand cleric and Lal Masjid's deputy administrator Abdul Rashid Ghazi to end the week-long standoff failed late last night.

Inter Service Public Relations Director General Maj Gen Waheed Arshad confirmed that fifty militants and eight soldiers have been killed so far in the operation. '' Abdul Rasheed Ghazi's wife Umme Hassan and daughter are among 60 civilians freed by soliders during the operation,'' he said, adding that Ghazi is learnt to have gone underground but it was not immediately clear whether he was still commanding the resistance.

As many as fifty militants surrendered after they were warned to lay down arms.

''The operation still continues with army commandos combing the huge complex of over 75 rooms and the basement in the Jamia Hafsa seminary,'' Maj Gen Arshad said, adding that with women and children in the complex, the authorities are taking a step by step approach so that there is no collateral damage.

''The main concern of the government is to secure the safe release of women and children still inside,'' he stressed.

He categorically rejected some media reports that nerve gases have been used. ''There is no nerve gases with the Army nor are they being used,'' he said.

The ISPR DG told mediapersons that the operation was launched around 0400 hrs (0430 hrs IST) with security personnel entering the mosque complex from three sides.

''There is intense engagement ... Militants are taking positions in almost every room, they're fighting from room to room, they have positions in the basement, on the stairs,'' he said.

Noting that the operation might last another three to four hours, he said that more than two-thirds of the sprawling mosque-school complex had been secured and some 30 children and 24 women had managed to get out and had been rescued by the Rangers.

Some of them informed the authorities that they were forcibly restrained inside.

He said it was likely that some portions of the mosque were damaged in the firing as the militants were using the minarets as firing positions.

Meanwhile, laterst media reports said that the security forces have recovered 50 male students and 30 women from Jamia Hafsa.

UNI