Pakistani troops storm mosque compound

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan -- Pakistani commandos stormed the besieged Red Mosque before dawn Tuesday and killed a hard-line cleric and dozens of his die-hard followers in a bloody assault that ignited fiery protests and calls for revenge by Islamic extremists.

The army said more than 50 militants and eight soldiers died in the fighting, but gunfire and explosions could still be heard after nightfall. Officials said troops were trying to clear militants from residential quarters next to one of the two schools in the compound.

Among the dead was pro-Taliban cleric Abdul Rashid Ghazi, who had been the public face of a campaign by the mosque leaders to use their students to impose puritanical Islamic rule in the capital.

Ghazi's body was found in the basement of the women's religious school in the compound after a fierce gunbattle, according to a senior Interior Ministry official, Brig. Javed Iqbal Cheema.

Elite troops attacked the mosque after a nearly weeklong siege failed to induce militants to surrender. Ghazi's older brother, Abdul Aziz, the mosque leader, was captured last week trying to slip out dressed in a woman's burqa and high heels .

Officials declined to estimate how many people were still inside Tuesday night, but a local relief agency said the army asked for 400 white funeral shrouds.

The government had sought to avoid a battle, fearing heavy bloodshed would worsen public discontent with President Gen. Pervez Musharraf. He is opposed by Islamic hard-liners for allying with the U.S., and angered many Pakistanis by trying to oust the chief justice.

Even as the fighting raged, more than 100 armed tribesmen and religious students chanted for the death of Musharraf and briefly blocked a road near the northwestern town of Batagram, police said. Some 500 students rallied in the eastern city of Multan, chanting "Down with Musharraf" and burning tires on a main road.

Ghazi's killing could provoke a "violent outburst" in the country, said Rasul Bakhsh Rais, a political scientist at the Lahore University of Management Sciences.

Benazir Bhutto, a former prime minister long regarded as Musharraf's chief political rival, agreed that might happen, but said the president made the right decision in assailing the mosque.

"I'm glad there was no cease-fire with the militants in the mosque because cease-fires simply embolden the militants," she told Sky TV from exile in Britain. "There will be a backlash, but at some time we have to stop appeasing the militants. We can't afford to keep appeasing them."