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ISLAMABAD - Sporadic gunfire and explosions could be heard Wednesday from Islamabad's Red Mosque as a Pakistani military operation to seize the complex, which has left over 60 people dead, entered a second day.
The army said it had taken control of 80 percent of the compound and was battling die-hard Islamist fighters holed up in basement rooms who were using women and children as human shields.
The military has said over 55 militants and eight soldiers have died in 24 hours of fierce fighting at the mosque. However little is known about the fate of the women and children, amid growing fears about their fate.
The leader of the uprising at the pro-Taliban mosque, firebrand cleric Abdul Rashid Ghazi, was killed late Tuesday in a major setback for the rebels who allegedly include militants linked to Al-Qaeda and other extremist groups.
President Pervez Musharraf ordered the assault after negotiations to end an eight-day siege at the complex, which itself left 24 people dead, collapsed.
However the army has been surprised by the level of resistance.
Minister of State for Information Tariq Azeem said the intense fighting from fighters using automatic weapons and rocket-propelled grenades showed the mosque had been infiltrated by hard-core Islamic radicals.
"The way they resisted, the way they engaged our troops, our best trained army for 16-17 hours shows they were trained fighters," he told a news conference late on Tuesday night.
Around 60 women and children have emerged from the complex since the assault was launched at dawn on Tuesday, but many more are believed to be inside. The government has previously said 300-400 were in the compound.
The mosque uprising in the heart of the leafy capital Islamabad, close to foreign embassies, has posed an unprecedented challenge to the rule of military ruler Musharraf, a key ally in the US-led "war on terror".
Analysts have warned there could be a backlash after the bloody ending of the siege. Over 20,000 tribesmen in northeast Pakistan rallied earlier in the week to call for a holy war against Musharraf, who has already survived at least three assassination attempts by militants linked to Al-Qaeda.
Ghazi, 43, the public face of the mosque and its deputy leader, said before he was killed in the fighting that he hoped his death would spark an Islamic revolution in Pakistan.
Tensions at the mosque began early this year when Ghazi's students launched an anti-vice campaign in a quest to enforce Islamic law. They kidnapped several people accused of prostitution, including seven Chinese nationals.
Street battles broke out on July 3 between police and the mosque's radical students, and it has been under a 24-hour shoot-on-sight curfew ever since.
Officials have said militant commanders are inside, including some from the extremist group Harkatul-Jihad-e-Islami, which has been accused of involvement in the murder of US journalist Daniel Pearl and an attempt to kill Musharraf.
Suspected militants tried to shoot down Musharraf's plane on Friday in an incident that officials said was in revenge for the mosque siege. - AFP/ir
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