Pakistan seeks to identify dead mosque militants

PAKISTAN: Pakistani authorities on Thursday examined the bodies of dozens of militants killed in a raid on Islamabad's Red Mosque in a bid to discover if any wanted insurgents were among the dead.

Troops on Wednesday cleared the final clutch of diehard extremists from the labyrinthine mosque compound after two days of intense fighting that left at least 73 rebels and nine soldiers dead.

"The bodies will be fingerprinted and photographed for identification and investigation," a security official told AFP.

Authorities want to find out if any of the militants are foreigners, the official added. 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.

Troops will also continue to sweep the complex for booby-traps in the morning, although the process is almost finished, officials said.

The last of the militants were found beneath the living quarters of their leader, radical cleric Abdul Rashid Ghazi, who was shot dead on Tuesday.

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

President Pervez Musharraf, who was set to address the nation about the crisis, ordered the assault after talks with Ghazi collapsed.

In an audiotape posted on the Internet, Al-Qaeda urged Pakistanis to revolt against their president following the storming of the mosque.

"If you do not revolt, Musharraf will annihilate you. Musharraf will not stop until he uproots Islam from Pakistan," the group's second-in-command, Ayman al-Zawahiri, said after stating that he was speaking on the "occasion of the criminal aggression" on the mosque.

The recording was hosted on a website known to publish Al-Qaeda statements. 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 164 special forces troops launched the assault at dawn on Tuesday. Officials said that a number of them were in hospital.

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. Journalists were due to visit the site on Thursday.

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, they said.

Islamabad, Thursday, AFP