Tension bursts at mosque in Islamabad

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan – The tension long-brewing around a radical mosque in Pakistan’s capital burst into street battles Tuesday between security forces and masked militants who challenged the government by mounting a vigilante anti-vice campaign.\nAt least nine people were killed and scores wounded in the clash, which underlined the concern at the spread of extremism in a country struggling to combat Taliban and al-Qaida militants.\nThe violence dramatically deepens a six-month standoff at Lal Masjid, or Red Mosque, whose hard-line clerics have kidnapped alleged prostitutes and police in their efforts to impose a Taliban-style version of Islamic law in the capital.\nDeputy Interior Minister Zafar Warriach said the dead included four students, three civilians, one soldier and a journalist. However, clerics at the mosque claimed that 10 of their supporters died, according to a lawmaker sent to mediate the dispute.\nThe deputy minister said 148 people were injured, most of them by tear gas fired by \nsecurity forces.\nBy nightfall, the city’s top security official, Khalid Pervez, said a cease-fire had been reached with the militants. But Warriach said the government was “considering all options” when asked what steps would be taken to defuse the standoff.\nOfficials said the unrest began Tuesday morning when police tried to stop militant students from occupying a government building. Reporters saw dozens of students, including young masked men with guns and black-robed women with long poles, moving toward security forces deployed about 200 yards from the red-walled, white-domed mosque.\nPolice shot tear gas and several male students, some of them masked, responded by opening fire. Gunfire was also heard from the police position.\nMen brandishing assault rifles, pistols and molotov cocktails, some of them wearing gas-masks, then gathered around the mosque, while security forces cordoned off the area with barbed wire and checkpoints and lobbed tear gas canisters at the demonstrators.\nAt one point, a man used the mosque’s loudspeakers to order suicide bombers to get into position. “They have attacked our mosque, the time for sacrifice has come,” the man said.\nNo such attacks were reported.\nThe students later pelted two government buildings, including the Ministry of Environment, with rocks and set them ablaze and torched a dozen cars in the ministry’s lot.\nAbdul Rashid Ghazi, the mosque’s deputy leader, said the security forces sparked the unrest by erecting the barricades near the mosque. \n“The government is to be blamed for it,” he said. \nWhen asked about the presence of armed students at the mosque, Ghazi said they “are our guards.”\nWarriach said it was the duty of the government to protect the life and property of its citizens, and “we will do it.”\nAuthorities have been at loggerheads with the mosque for months over a land dispute and its attempts to impose a harsh version of Islamic law in the capital.\nSenior officials, including the head of the ruling party, have tried to negotiate a settlement of their grievances. However, clerics have steadily raised the stakes, kidnapping police officers and alleged prostitutes, including several Chinese nationals, and repeatedly threatening suicide attacks if security forces intervened.