Pakistani commander slain

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan – After a senior Pakistani commando was killed in fighting overnight, government officials said Sunday the fighters holed up inside an Islamabad mosque are well-trained and well-armed militants with connections to known terrorist groups.

The fighters are “terrorists, militants, who are wanted within and outside the country,” said Religious Affairs Minister Mohammad Ejaz-ul-Haq, speaking at a news conference. Ul-Haq suggested that some are not Pakistani.

A lieutenant colonel leading an operation to blast holes in the perimeter wall of the mosque so women and children could escape was killed Saturday night. A major was injured.

The known death toll from the standoff is at 24, although the mosque’s lead cleric, Abdul Rashid Ghazi, said Sunday that 300 of his followers had been killed. Government officials dispute that assertion.

The area around the mosque was eerily quiet all day Sunday and into the evening following explosions and a frenzied exchange of fire overnight Saturday. However, Pakistani television reported late Sunday that President Pervez Musharraf had given the go-ahead for a new operation against the mosque. Intermittent fire could be heard late Sunday.

Positions had hardened in the standoff at the pro-Taliban Red Mosque on Saturday, as a peace effort collapsed amid a hail of gunfire and Musharraf called on Islamic radicals hunkered down inside to surrender or face death.

Ghazi, 43, a cleric who took over leadership of the mosque after the arrest of his brother earlier in the week, has said he and his followers want to be martyred. “I prefer to fight and prefer death instead of surrendering,” Ghazi told the BBC. “Islamabad will become like Baghdad if the government commits aggression against the Red Mosque and kills me.”