Ghazi offers conditional surrender after 16 killed

Ghazi offers conditional surrender after 16 killed

Lal Masjid's cleric on Wednesday offered a conditional surrender after troops took up positions around his mosque, but said he still insisted on the imposition of Islamic law.

Abdul Rashid Ghazi, one of two brothers who leads the Lal Masjid, made the offer after 16 people were killed in clashes between his students and security forces in the capital.

"We are ready to set aside arms if we have written guarantees that they will not attack or launch an operation. They say we should not talk about Islamic law -- we have our reservations about that," Ghazi told a private television channel.

"We have advised our students against opening fire. They are not firing now. We are on the defensive," Ghazi added.

"They (security forces) are firing indiscriminately. They opened fire when people were coming to say dawn prayers. The mosque has been badly damaged."

Hundreds of troops, some in armoured personnel carriers, have massed around the building amid a curfew imposed by the government. Officials said armed violators would be shot.

Loudspeaker announcements urged the compound's leaders to surrender.

Ghazi denied the presence of suicide bombers at the facility, a claim made by unidentified mullahs over the mosque's loudspeaker during Tuesday's clashes.

His brother, Abdul Aziz, threatened in April to unleash thousands of suicide bombers if the government stormed the mosque.

But he blamed the government for causing the crisis in the first place.

"The government should ponder on this. There is already a wrath of Allah. People are dying in floods and here they are killing their own people," he said.

He said the mosque had held talks with opposition leader, Maulana Fazlur Rehman, in a bid to end the stand-off but had not spoken to the government.

Ghazi added that the mosque had enough supplies to carry on "until God wants."

Rehman later told the television channel that a council of religious scholars wanted to meet the cleric brothers, adding that it would be a "positive development" if the two brothers were handed over to them.