Click to play videoNew Delhi/ Islamambad: Pakistani security forces and Islamic radicals holed up in the Lal Masjid mosque again exchange fire on Thursday.
Army tanks are closing in on the mosque and Cobra helicopter gun ships are hovering overhead. Pakistani security forces have warned heavily armed Islamic students inside the mosque to surrender peacefully.
Earlier in the day, forces fired warning shots at a seminary within the mosque. Seminary students retaliated and injured two soldiers.
There were about eight explosions at intervals of several minutes, witnesses said. Some gunfire also erupted but both the blasts and gunfire stopped after about 20 minutes.
Liberal politicians have for months pressed President Pervez Musharraf to crack down on a pair of cleric brothers in charge of the mosque and their Taliban-style movement of thousands of religious students. The students, some of whom have guns, had undertaken a series of provocative acts over the past six months to press for various demands including action against vice. The clerics had threatened suicide attacks if force was used against them.
In a major coup for the government, the mosque's chief cleric, Abdul Aziz, was arrested while trying to escape clad in a woman's all-enveloping burqa on Wednesday. Aziz ran Lal Masjid with his brother, Abdul Rashid Ghazi, who was still inside the mosque, defying orders to surrender.
More than 21 people have been killed and 150 injured in the standoff since Monday. Diplomats in Pakistan have been urged by the authorities to restrict their movements fearing attacks as a fall out of the stand-off between the radical clerics of Lal Masjid and security forces.
(With Reuters)
(For updates you can share with your friends, follow IBNLive on Facebook, Twitter, Google+ and Pinterest)
More on IBNLive Right Now
TOP NEWS
MOST SHARED
PHOTOGALLERY
