Al-Qaeda urges Pakistanis to revolt over mosque assault

ISLAMABAD (AFP) - Al-Qaeda Thursday urged Pakistanis to revolt against President Pervez Musharraf over the storming of an Islamabad mosque as officials examined the bodies of militants killed in the raid.

Troops cleared the final clutch of diehard extremists from the Red Mosque after two days of intense fighting that left at least 73 rebels and nine soldiers dead and turned the heart of the capital into a battleground.

"The bodies will be fingerprinted and photographed for identification and investigation," a security official said. Authorities want to find out if any of the militants are foreigners, the official told AFP.

Leader of the militants, radical cleric Abdul Rashid Ghazi, was among those killed in the storming which followed a week-long standoff with the military.

Ghazi and students at the mosque, which houses a female madrassa, had been involved in an aggressive Taliban-style campaign for Islamic law in the capital, including the kidnapping of seven Chinese accused of prostitution.

The clearing of the compound came as Al-Qaeda posted an audiotape on the Internet calling on Pakistanis to revolt against Musharraf, branding Tuesday's storming "criminal aggression."

"If you do not revolt, Musharraf will annihilate you. Musharraf will not stop until he uproots Islam from Pakistan," said Ayman al-Zawahiri, the group's second-in-command.

"Muslims in Pakistan: no salvation for you except through Jihad (holy fight). Rigged elections and politics will not help you.... You should now support the mujahedin (holy warriors) in Afghanistan," he said.

"Are there no honourable men in Pakistan?" he added.

The recording was hosted on a website known to publish Al-Qaeda statements.

Security forces have already ordered a nationwide alert for potential revenge attacks for the mosque storming, including possible suicide blasts.

Musharraf, who was set to address the nation on Thursday about the crisis, ordered the mosque assault after talks with Ghazi collapsed.

Officials have said that militants with links to Al-Qaeda and Afghanistan's Taliban movement were holed up in the compound.
Ministers have said some Uzbek militants were among several foreigners inside.

Chief military spokesman Major General Waheed Arshad said 73 militants were killed together with nine soldiers. Another 24 people, including two soldiers, died in the lengthy siege that preceded the raid.

Pakistani Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz said no bodies of women or children had been found despite earlier statements by officials that the Islamists were holding hundreds of them in the mosque.

Around 60 women and children have emerged from the complex since special forces troops launched the assault at dawn on Tuesday.

Another 1,300 people, around two-thirds of them women, fled earlier in the standoff. Officials said initial estimates of the number left when the raid started appeared to have been overstated.

The mosque was badly damaged and booby-traps were found "everywhere," a security official who inspected the scene told AFP.

The bodies of Ghazi and two other unidentified people were flown to the cleric's home village of Sadwani in Punjab province late Wednesday for burial at a madrassa built by his father, who also founded the Red Mosque, officials said. His mother, who also died in the raid, will be buried elsewhere.

The mosque siege followed street battles that broke out on July 3 between police and the mosque's radical students who had earlier abducted the seven Chinese accused of prostitution.

They were released the same day as their capture.

Ghazi, 43, the public face of the mosque and its deputy leader, said before he was killed in the fighting that he and his followers would rather die than surrender and hoped his death would spark an Islamic revolution in Pakistan.

His brother, head cleric Abdul Aziz, was caught trying to flee the mosque in a burqa a week ago.

The mosque uprising in the heart of the capital, close to foreign embassies, has posed an unprecedented challenge to military ruler Musharraf, a key ally in the US-led "war on terror."

US intelligence chiefs urged Pakistan Thursday to wage a more vigorous pursuit of terrorism, warning that its lawless region bordering Afghanistan has become a sanctuary for Al-Qaeda and Taliban diehards.