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ISLAMABAD : Pakistan moved closer to a raid on a besieged mosque in Islamabad on Sunday, after officials said Al-Qaeda-linked rebels including foreigners had seized control and may start killing hostages.
Government forces tightened the noose on day six of the siege of the Red Mosque as a top commando died in an operation to blast through the wall around the building and allow women and children allegedly held inside to flee.
Religious Affairs Minister Ijaz-ul Haq said the government believed the mosque's firebrand deputy leader, Abdul Rashid Ghazi, had effectively been deposed by the extremists.
"Ghazi is no longer in control. The hardcore militants are in control of the mosque," Haq told AFP. "Our fear is that they may start killing the women and children to press for their demand for safe passage."
Haq said that inside the mosque there were "terrorists who are wanted within and outside Pakistan. These terrorists have links with Arabs."
One or two militants from Uzbekistan were also involved, he said.
Arabs, Uzbeks and Chechens formed the backbone of an Al-Qaeda force that fled into Pakistan's troubled tribal areas after the US-led invasion of neighbouring Afghanistan following the 9/11 attacks in the United States.
Military ruler Pervez Musharraf and Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz spoke by telephone and held meetings with key officials on Sunday to weigh up the government's options after so far delaying a full-scale onslaught on the mosque.
"The overwhelming sentiment in the two meetings was that there should be an operation to end the standoff, and the government cannot be seen to be bowing to pressure from the militants," a top official told AFP.
Musharraf, who on Saturday told the militants to surrender or be killed, earlier attended the funeral of Colonel Haroon Islam, the elite commando killed in the clashes overnight.
Ghazi told local television that 335 people inside the mosque were killed in Sunday's latest fighting. Information Minister Tariq Azeem dismissed the claim and said the death toll from the entire siege was 24.
Security officials said the mosque militants included Pakistanis from a group linked to the beheading of US journalist Daniel Pearl and attempts to kill President Musharraf.
Fifteen militants have been issued with suicide jackets, one senior official said, citing intercepts.
"We believe there are militants from Harkatul-Jihad-e-Islami, which was involved in the Pearl murder. Based on intelligence we suspect that two commanders from the group are in there," the official told AFP.
The organisation sheltered many of the Al-Qaeda militants who fled Afghanistan in 2001. Its former chief, Amjad Farooqi, played a key role in Pearl's 2002 beheading and a 2003 attempt to assassinate Musharraf.
A mosque source identified the leader of the Harkatul-Jihad-e-Islami militants in the mosque as Abu Zar, a former accomplice of Farooqi, who was killed by security forces in 2004.
There was "lot of tension among the various groups inside the compound on how to conduct the fight," the source added on condition of anonymity for fear of his own safety.
Twelve female students are on a hunger strike and have demanded to leave the besieged complex, while several other female students died in clashes on Sunday, the source said.
Militants also shot at the legs of three girls who escaped, interior minister Aftab Sherpao told reporters.
Ghazi remained defiant.
He and his followers have written wills saying that they will die rather than surrender, and that "martyrdom" will spark an Islamic revolution in extremism-hit Pakistan, a source at the mosque told AFP.
"Our blood will not go to waste," Ghazi's will said.
In the latest of a series of attacks across the country thought to be linked to the mosque siege, militants blew up a security vehicle in the Bajaur tribal area, killing a policeman, while four more officers were kidnapped.
Ghazi, 43, signalled his defiance on Saturday by saying that he was telephoned by a man who claimed to have shot at Musharraf's aircraft in revenge for the siege.
Students affiliated to the mosque have irked the government since January with a Taliban-style anti-vice campaign, which has involved the abduction of several people they linked to prostitution, including seven Chinese. - AFP/de
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