M A I N   N E W S

Call to topple Pervez
Lay siege to Islamabad: Jamaat

Lahore, October 29
Jamaat-e-Islami chief Qazi Hussain Ahmad has called on the people to lay siege to Islamabad and remove President Pervez Musharraf who is siding with “enemies” against Afghan brothers.

Addressing an anti-US rally here on Sunday, he said the decision to lay siege to Islamabad would be taken unanimously by all religious parties.

He said he had convened a meeting of Muttahida Majlis-e-Amal, a platform of six major religious parties, to chalk out a strategy. “But I ask you to be ready to reach and besiege Islamabad,” Qazi told the crowd which responded to his call affirmatively in a loud “yes”.

Addressing over 25,000 highly-charged and slogan-shouting people at The Mall, Qazi said: “Take along at least 10 days food with you and don’t bring arms. We will lay siege to the city and not return until the unpopular and illegal Musharraf government is replaced by the one capable of standing up against the enemies, and acceptable to the nation.” ANI

Jehadis returned in coffins

Chaman, October 29
The bodies of six Pakistanis killed fighting with Afghanistan’s Taliban against the USA and Northern Alliance opponents were brought to their border village today.

Thousands of tribesmen and women gathered for an angry funeral procession in Chaman, on the south western frontier with Afghanistan, demanding holy war against the USA whose bombs had killed some of them.

The villagers and relatives of the dead shouted "Cruel America’’ and "Death to America’’, and carried photographs of Muslim heroes and Saudi-born militant Osama bin Laden, Washington’s chief suspect in the September 11 attacks, and Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein.

"It was American bombardment and an ambush by the Northern Alliance (that killed them),’’ a man told Reuters television, adding that the Pakistanis, all from Chaman, were killed in Badghais, near the western Afghan city of Herat.

The Taliban hold about 90 per cent of Afghanistan, while the Northern Alliance military coalition of ethnic minorities controls the rest.

In Chaman, relatives wept over the coffins as they were laid out on the dirt track running through the village in the parched and sprawling province of Baluchistan, while officials from the pro-Taliban Jamiat-e-Ulema Islam (JUI) party called for revenge.

KABUL: US warplanes today hit an area of caves and tunnels in eastern Afghanistan known, as a hideout of Osama bin Laden, killing two persons.

But the skies above Kabul were quieter than of late as the U.S. campaign of bombing the ruling Taliban militia for sheltering the Saudi-born militant entered its fourth week.

The bombing and a mounting toll of Afghan civilians have stoked anger in the neighbouring Pakistan, where armed tribesmen waited to cross the border to fight with the Taliban against the US attacks.

US planes dropped at least two bombs in Gora Tangi, near the Pakistan border, killing two persons, the Pakistan-based Afghan Islamic Press agency said.

The area has been under intense fire because of its links with Bin Laden, accused by the USA of masterminding the attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon that killed around 5,000 persons.

Bin Laden built a maze of tunnels there when fighting the Soviet occupation in the 1980s. Reuters