Here are some facts about the Red Mosque crisis, where hardline Islamist students have been confronting the government since January:

- Lal Masjid, or Red Mosque, is regarded as a symbol of radical Islam in Pakistan. It was established in 1965 by Muhammad Abdullah, a cleric believed to have had close ties to dictator General Zia-ul-Haq.

- About 5,000 students study at the two madrasas (seminaries) attached to the mosque.

- The mosque is well known for its criticism of the government and anti-U.S. and pro-Taliban sentiments. Abdul Aziz took over as the chief cleric after the assassination of his father, Abdullah, in 1998.

- He issued a fatwa, or religious decree, in 2005 declaring that Pakistani soldiers killed fighting militants in the northern tribal areas could not be given Muslim funeral rites.

- After the July 2005 bombings in London, police attempted to raid the mosque and the adjoining seminary to investigate its link with one of the bombers. Security forces were prevented from entering the compound by baton-wielding women.

- The mosque has been at odds with the authorities since January when female students occupied a library next door to protest against the destruction of mosques illegally built on state land. The students also pressured owners of music and video shops to close.

Timeline:

March 27 – Burqa-clad female students from the mosque’s Jamia Hafsa school abduct three women they accuse of running a brothel. The women are released after they “repent”.

March 30 – Authorities shut down an illegal FM radio station set up by the students and hardline clerics to propagate their strict version of Islam.

April 6 – Aziz announces plans to set up vigilante Islamic courts and exhorts followers to become suicide bombers if their Taliban-style movement is forcibly suppressed.

April 25 – The leader of Pakistan’s ruling party declares all issues have been settled peacefully but a cleric denies any agreement was reached.

May 18 – Students seize four policemen and demand that authorities release 11 comrades being held in detention. The four policemen are later freed.

June 23 – Students kidnap nine people, including six Chinese women, and accuse them of running a brothel. They are released after about 17 hours.

June 29 – President Pervez Musharraf says suicide bombers from an al Qaeda-linked militant group are in Lal Masjid.

July 3 – Clashes erupt between the students and security forces when about 150 students attack a security post at a government office near the mosque and snatch weapons. Violence continues the next day. Sixteen people are killed.

July 4 – Aziz is arrested while trying to escape clad in a woman’s burqa; up to 1,200 students surrender.

As Pakistan forces continue to beseige Islamabad’s Red Mosque, the number of people killed in the standoff so far remains unclear. The official tally is 24, including a Pakistani Lieutenant-Colonel killed in operations overnight. But the Taliban-style extremists, holed up inside the mosque, claim 300 people, mostly young girls, were killed overnight when troops blew up a part of the surrounding wall. Pakistan has held back from storming the compound because there could be up to 2500 human shield hostages inside, some of them children as young as 5 years-old. The compound houses a boys and a girls school. The students were inside when radical cleric Abdul Rashid Ghazi barricaded them in last Tuesday after clashes between troops and his armed followers. Some students have emerged but it has proved very difficult for the authorities to know who is a militant and who is a genuine student. The elder brother of the cleric tried to escape dressed as a woman on Wednesday.The younger Ghazi says he prefers martyrdom to giving up, in the hope of sparking an Islamic revolution in Pakistan.

Sources: Reuters, Pajamas Media, Pakistan Uncut
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UPDATE: Pakistani troops cornered holdout Islamic militants and combed the warren-like Red Mosque complex for booby traps Wednesday after assaulting the compound and killing its pro-Taliban cleric Abdul Rashid Ghazi.

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