Children used as shields in Pakistan mosque: govt
ISLAMABAD (Reuters) - Women and children were being used as human shields by militants besieged in a mosque in Islamabad, the Pakistan government said on Thursday as security forces ratcheted up pressure on hundreds inside to surrender.
Pakistan's Deputy Information Minister Tariq Azim Khan said the few students who had quit the mosque spoke of a nightmare scenario for security forces trying to keep casualties down.
"A large number of women and children are being held hostage by armed men in room," Khan told a news conference, adding that the brother of the captured cleric was hiding in the basement of an attached madrasa with 25 "women hostages."
"Yes, they're using them as human shields, because the people who have come out, they told us that they're telling women and children not to worry because as long as you're here forces will not attack us," he said.
In an interview broadcast earlier on state television, the leader of the Red Mosque's Taliban-style student movement, caught the previous evening trying to escape wearing a woman's burqa, said 850 students remained inside, including 600 women and girls.
Abdul Aziz, clad in a woman's all-enveloping garment like the one he was caught in, began the interview by dramatically lifting the black veil to reveal a face dominated by a bushy grey beard.
He said 14 men were armed with Kalashnikovs in the mosque.
"Now there are 50 to 60 hardcore militants inside the mosque who are armed with automatic weapons, grenades and petrol bombs," Interior Minister Ahmed Aftab Khan Sherpao said.
Smiling through much of a bizarre interview Aziz said he had had urged others to leave the mosque, but some women teachers had persuaded girls to stay behind.
"They are not being used as human shields, we only gave them passion for jihad," said Aziz, who was later remanded in court.
Hundreds of police and soldiers, backed by armored personnel carriers, have sealed off Red Mosque, or Lal Masjid, and imposed an indefinite curfew in the neighborhood around it. Water, gas and electricity supplies to the mosque have also been cut.
Aziz said it was time for all the students to leave.
"They should either leave, if they can, or surrender."
One 12-year-old girl, Maria Habib, who was escorted from the mosque by her uncle on Thursday, said there were between 35 and 40 students of her age still inside.
RISING TOLL
Liberal politicians have for months pressed President Pervez Musharraf, who faces elections later this year, to crack down on the cleric brothers in charge of the mosque and their movement.
The Lal Masjid movement is part of a phenomenon known as "Talibanisation" -- the spread of militant influence from remote tribal regions on the Afghan border into central areas.
The government has set several deadlines for surrender and used scare tactics, including warning explosions, bursts of gunfire and overflying helicopter gunships to weaken the resolve of the mosque's occupants.
Early on Thursday evening there was a loud explosion in the vicinity of the mosque and Reuters journalists saw some smoke, but it was unclear whether it was a percussion blast. There was also a fresh outbreak of heavy gunfire after an earlier lull.
The death toll from the violence that began on Tuesday with clashes outside the mosque rose to at least 19 on Thursday, the interior minister said, but the toll was expected to rise.
A burqa-clad woman who left the mosque told Reuters Television she had seen four bodies including those of two girls.
Before dawn, security forces fired a series of "warning blasts," to scare the hold-outs into surrendering, but by early afternoon only 66 students had left the compound, according to a register made at checkpoints outside the mosque, compared with close to 1,200 on Wednesday.
Seven students were caught trying to escape.
"TIME FOR TALKING OVER"
Abdul Aziz's younger brother, Abdul Rashid Ghazi, told Reuters by telephone he would seek talks, but the government said the only option was surrender.
The mosque has a history of supporting militancy but the latest trouble began in January when students, who range from pre-teenagers to people in their 30s, occupied a library to protest the destruction of mosques illegally built on state land.
But it was last month's kidnapping of Chinese women they accused of prostitution, that was a key factor forcing the government into action, officials said.
Suicide attack threats had stopped the government using force earlier. Two attacks on security forces elsewhere in Pakistan on Wednesday raised fears militant allies were hitting back.
(Additional reporting by Augustine Anthony, Zeeshan Haider, and Kamran Haider)
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