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Lal Masjid Stand-off Lt-Col dies in gunfight Ghazi claims 305 students killed in assault Afzal Khan writes from Islamabad
President Pervez Musharraf and other top military officials attended the funeral of Lieut-Col Haroon-ul-Islam of the paramilitary Special Security Group. Officials said the officer died while attempting to rescue several women and children from the besieged mosque. Meanwhile, government and military spokesmen today refuted Lal Masjid’s defiant cleric Maulana Abdul Rashid Ghazi’s claim that about 305 students were killed in roof collapse due to heavy shelling by the army on the Jamia Hafsa seminary on Saturday. They, however, feared that explosives stocked in the mosque could have caused the blast resulting into casualties. A Lal Masjid spokesman told reporters on telephone that roofs of two rooms of the seminary collapsed under heavy mortar fire by the army after midnight killing about 280 girls and 25 boys. Interior ministry spokesman Brig Javed Iqbal Cheema termed the allegation as baseless and fabricated. He said the security forces had all along strictly avoided firing at targets where collateral damage was apprehended. Therefore, no heavy weapon had been used thus far. Pakistan Army spokesman Major-General Waheed Arshad also repudiated the claim. He said the troops conducted an operation to bring down outer-walls of the Jamia in order to expand openings for hostages being kept by the militants. But, he said, a heavy cache of arms and explosives existed in the Madarsa and, possibly, some deaths might have occurred when they blew up. He recalled that Ghazi had earlier said he had a few licenced Kalashnikovs, but was now issuing warnings that he possessed stocks of weapons enough to keep the fighting going for one month. Javed Cheema said time was passing fast and it would be better for Abdul Rashid Ghazi and his companions to surrender and let the children come out. Meanwhile, the death of Lt-Col Haroon-ul-Islam gave a nasty twist to the ongoing tension, bringing closer the final assault by security forces to flush out inmates. President Musharraf said at Haroon’s funeral prayers at the Chaklala airbase near Rawalpindi this afternoon that the killers would not be spared. “Their end is imminent,” Musharraf said. A senior government figure hinted at a massive thrust at night adding that “All will hopefully be over by Monday morning”. More troops were deployed within three kilometre radius around the mosque. Colonel Haroon was leading a battalion of the Special Services Group, the ace commando force of the Pakistan army to which General Musharraf once belonged, to rescue several hundred students, including girls of the Jamia Hafsa seminary, when he was shot by the militants from inside the mosque.
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Pakistani security forces today suffered their first major casualty in the six-day stand-off with extremists holed up in Lal Masjid with the killing of a Lieut-Colonel. 