Red Mosque Hostage Crisis Over After 8-Day Seige
Posted July 11, 2007 12:00 pm.
This article is more than 5 years old.
After an grueling 8-day standoff and intense gun battles, the Red Mosque hostage crisis in Islamabad is finally over. Pakistani commandos cleared the complex of the last of its die-hard defenders Wednesday morning, a day after the rebel’s leader, cleric Abdul Rashid Ghazi, was killed.
More than 50 militants and 10 soldiers were killed and 33 wounded in the 35-hour assault by the elite Special Services Group. Army spokesman Maj.-Gen. Waheed Ashad said the compound could still hold mines, booby traps and other weaponry but the first phase of their operation is over.
“There are no more militants left inside,” says Arshad.
The Pakistani prime minister says no bodies of women and children were found inside and all are thought to have been released earlier. The largest group of 27 women and three children left the mosque on Tuesday.
The militants had been using the mosque as a base to send out radicalized students, who were enforcing their version of Islamic morality. They were accused of assaults and kidnappings, where they would attempt to convert supposed prostitutes and others to their way of thinking. At least 1,300 people had escaped the Mosque since July 3.
