"Our fear is that they may start killing the women and children to press for their demand for safe passage."
Growing consensus
Pervez Musharraf, the Pakistani president, and Shaukat Aziz, the prime minister, held meetings with key officials on Sunday to weigh up the government's options after so far delaying a full-scale onslaught on the mosque.
"The overwhelming sentiment in the two meetings was that there should be an operation to end the standoff," a senior official said.
"The final assault could come in a day or two but efforts will continue to secure the safe release of women and children inside the complex," the official said.
Private television stations in Pakistan reported that Musharraf had given the "go ahead signal for a final assault" but did not say when it was likely.
Haq said that inside the mosque there were "terrorists who are wanted within and outside Pakistan. These terrorists have links with Arabs".
One or two fighters from Uzbekistan were also involved, he said.
Sporadic gunfire broke out after nightfall. Security forces also made announcements over loudspeakers urging the hold-outs to surrender.
Revenge killings
Suspected Islamic fighters meanwhile shot dead three Chinese men in Peshawar, the capital of the North West Province bordering Afghanistan, on Sunday.
A fourth Chinese man was wounded in the raid at their residence in what security sources termed an apparent revenge attack over the mosque siege.
Students affiliated to the mosque have troubled the government with an anti-vice campaign since January, which has involved the abduction of several people they linked to prostitution, including seven Chinese.
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The Red Mosque has been besieged
for seven days [AFP] |
Security officials said that two Pakistani commanders from Harkatul-Jihad-e-Islami, a group linked to the beheading of US journalist Daniel Pearl and 2003 attempts to assassinate Musharraf, were inside the mosque.
Fifteen of those inside the mosque have been issued with suicide jackets, one senior official said, citing intercepts.
On Sunday, the government released 152 students who were detained after leaving the mosque.
Aziz reiterated the government's call for those in the mosque to release men, women and children allegedly being held as human shields and surrender.
Ghazi, 43, remained defiant. He and his followers have written wills saying that they would die rather than surrender, and that "martyrdom" would spark an Islamic revolution in Pakistan, a source at the mosque told AFP.
"Our blood will not go to waste," Ghazi's will said.
Leaflets meanwhile have been distributed in Miranshah, the main town in the troubled North Waziristan tribal district bordering Afghanistan, urging Muslims to take up arms in revenge for students killed in the mosque.