MIDDLE EAST:Pakistani commandos killed the rebel cleric Abdul Rashid Ghazi yesterday at the climax of a blistering battle for control of the besieged Red Mosque complex in central Islamabad. At least 58 others also died.
After more than 20 hours of battle and dozens of casualties, special forces troops controlled most of the compound by last night, having narrowed the fighting to a few last pockets of resistance.
Mr Ghazi, a university educated cleric who tried to foist Sharia rule on the capital, was shot twice as commandos stormed his basement hideout. After refusing to answer calls to surrender, he was hit by a second volley of bullets and died. His death did not, as he had hoped, spark an Islamist revolution across Pakistan. It did mark the end of a week-long siege that has threatened Gen Pervez Musharraf's authority, turned part of Islamabad into a militarised zone and captivated tens of millions of anxious Pakistanis.
The operation to storm the mosque was launched under darkness at 4am, minutes after last-ditch efforts for a peaceful end to the siege of the mosque by 12,000 police and soldiers. The Special Services Group (SSG) - which president Musharraf once commanded - led the attack, striking from three sides.
They immediately came under a barrage of fire from heavily armed militants hunkered behind sandbagged positions on the roof and firing through ventilation holes in the walls. Predictions by military officials that it would be over within four hours proved hopelessly optimistic.
Throughout the day a cacophony of explosions and thunderous gunfire echoed across the normally peaceful city as the assault, codenamed Operation Silence, continued. Speculation was rife that foreign fighters with links to al-Qaeda or combat veterans from Afghanistan and Kashmir were among the militants.
A hard core of fighters took up positions inside Jamia Hafsa, a sprawling, labyrinthine religious school for girls inside the mosque compound. Some were armed with guns and rockets; several areas had been booby trapped.
"It's very slow work. They are fighting us room to room, in the stairs and on the verandas," said spokesman Maj Gen Waheed Arshad during a midday briefing.
By late afternoon the commandos had suffered 12 dead and more than 27 injured, according to unofficial reports, but had pushed the militants into a guarded basement beneath the madrasa. Officials suspected the fighters were using a network of secret tunnels to evade capture.
Fleets of ambulances ferried the dead and wounded to hospitals, where officials said they had treated dozens of injuries. Abdul Sattar Edhi, head of a respected aid agency, told reporters that the army had asked him to prepare 400 shrouds used for covering the dead.
Before the attack the army said it feared that hundreds of women and children were held inside the madrasa basement as human shields. Gen Arshad said that 87 people - a mix of escapees and prisoners - had left the compound alive including Umme Hassan, wife of firebrand preacher Abdul Aziz captured trying to flee the mosque under a burka last week. Mr Aziz is Mr Ghazi's brother.
But many other people were unaccounted for, and suspicions that the government was trying to mask the true extent of civilian casualties grew. Local journalists were denied access to the hospital.