Scores Killed As Pakistani Commandos Storm Mosque

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan, July 10 -- Pakistani commandos stormed the Red Mosque at dawn Tuesday after last-minute negotiations broke down and President Pervez Musharraf gave the go-ahead for an operation aimed at ending the eight-day siege. At least 43 people were killed and the death toll was expected to climb.

Loud explosions could be heard around the mosque and a thick plume of smoke rose above the site as extremists who had sequestered themselves in the compound's basement used automatic weapons, rocket launchers and grenades to try to fend off the assault from the elite government troops.

Commandos breached the compound within an hour of the operation's start and were fighting the radicals from inside as they attempted to take over the mosque complex.

By 9 a.m., at least three commandos had been killed and 15 members of the security forces had been wounded, according to a military spokesman, Maj. Gen. Waheed Arshad. Forty radicals in the compound had been killed and scores more were wounded or captured, Arshad said. A source at a hospital that was treating civilians said the staff was handling dozens of casualties, some of them women. Security forces picked up 20 children who fled as the fighting began, while ambulances raced to and from the scene.

Seventy percent of the complex had been cleared of extremists as of 9 a.m., and commandos, sweeping room by room, were approaching an area where women and children were thought to be held, Arshad said.

"It will take some more time," he said over the noise of sporadic explosions and gunfire. "The militants were fully prepared. They were well armed and well trained."

Hundreds of people were believed to be in the complex at the time of the raid. The government said the fighters were holding woman and children inside.

"They are using the children as human shields," Arshad said.

The raid came a day after Musharraf's government sent a high-level delegation to hold talks with the mosque's radical cleric, Abdul Rashid Ghazi, despite earlier pronouncements that negotiations were not an option.

Ghazi spoke with a Pakistani television station as the raid began and blamed the government for the breakdown of the negotiations. "I'm about to die," he said, "but I will fight until my last."

When another TV station later reached Ghazi by telephone, he shouted that commandos were entering his room and then hung up, the station reported.

Ghazi's whereabouts were unknown. Arshad said he had no information on whether Ghazi had been killed or captured and noted that he could be hiding in the part of the complex that remained unsearched.