Pakistan Steps Up Pressure on Mosque Militants

Black smoke poured from a besieged radical mosque in central Islamabad today as Pakistani security forces stepped up pressure on the Islamist militants holed up inside to surrender.

The army tightened its siege of Lal Masjid, or the Red Mosque, throughout the day, using scare tactics that included bursts of gunfire, explosions and overhead passes by helicopter gunships.

Clerics from the mosque have been trying to impose Taliban-style Islamic law in Islamabad.

At dusk, two loud explosions echoed across the city as security forces blew large holes in the front and back walls of the mosque. Some reports said soldiers had thrown gas canisters inside.

The dramatic scenes may be the final act of a confrontation that began on Tuesday when six months of tension between the government and mosque militants exploded in a street battle that left at least 16 people dead and 150 injured.

Since then, the army has tried to wear the militants down, exhorting younger students - many of them girls - to leave and ordering older militants to lay down their weapons or face death.

Around 1,200 students, half of them female, abandoned the mosque yesterday, but only a trickle left today.

A senior army officer estimated that 400 people remained inside the building - 100 of them armed. Other estimates put the number of people still inside as high as 2,000.

The high proportion of women and children - some apparently held against their will - has delayed the government's assault on the mosque, officials said.

"They are cowards, holding children as human shields," Tasneem Aslam, the Foreign Office spokeswoman, said. "That is the only reason we have not taken all-out action."

Lal Masjid, Islamabad's oldest mosque, came to prominence in January when its students launched an anti-vice campaign in the capital, kidnapping prostitutes.

The militants' leader, Maulana Abdul Aziz, was captured trying to flee the mosque last night, disguised under an all-covering burka. His wife, who ran the women's school, was also arrested.

His brother Abdul Rashid Ghazi, who remains inside the mosque surrounded by a hardcore of fighters, has assumed command, taking a defiant line in peace talks.

However, since being captured, Mr Aziz - who once boasted of having a cadre of suicide bombers - has softened his tone.

In an extraordinary interview on state television today, he predicated that the mosque students would not be able to hold out for long and urged them to leave the building.

"If they can get out quietly, they should go, or they can surrender if they want to," he said. "I saw after coming out that the siege is very intense ... our companions will not be able to stay for long."

He said female teachers had persuaded some girls to remain inside, adding: "They are not being used as human shields, we only gave them passion for jihad [holy war]."

One 12-year-old girl, Maria Habib, who was escorted from the mosque by her uncle, said between 35 and 40 students of her age were still inside.

Mr Aziz said 700 women and around 250 men remained inside the mosque compound and an adjacent women's seminary, some armed with more than a dozen AK-47 assault rifles provided by "friends".

Worried relatives of students still inside the mosque have flooded into Islamabad, desperately seeking a way to get them out.

Munshi Khan, from Abbottabad, was waiting for news of his brothers Usman, 10, and 12-year-old Imran.

"They may be hostages. They are not letting them out," he said, adding that phone efforts to persuade the boys to leave had been scuppered by militants. "A man behind the scenes took the phone off them," he said. "Since then, we have had no more contact."

However, other parents said their children wanted to stay inside, insisting it was their duty under Islam.

The showdown has added to the sense of crisis in Pakistan where President Musharraf - a major US ally - has faced a succession of emergencies in recent months.

A clumsy attempt to fire the country's chief justice triggered a pro-democracy movement, the Taliban is growing increasingly bold along the Afghan border, and huge floods in southern and western provinces have left more than a million people homeless.