Bomb kills at least 13 near newly reopened mosque

AP/B.K. BANGASH People visit the ruins of a seminary next to the Red Mosque, renamed the Main Mosque, in Islamabad, Pakistan, on Friday. Troops fought hundreds of protesters at the mosque.


Bomb kills at least 13 near newly reopened mosque
By NAVEED AHMAD and TOM LASSETER
McClatchy Newspapers

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan -- A bomb targeting police reinforcements ripped through a hotel restaurant in the Pakistani capital Friday, killing at least 13 people and wounding more than 61, as troops fought hundreds of protesters in a melee at the newly reopened Red Mosque nearby.
The blast, suspected to be the work of a suicide bomber, was the latest in a string of explosions and attacks that have rocked Pakistan, a U.S. ally, since a commando assault at the Lal Masjid, or Red Mosque, killed at least 75 people holed up there in a bloody two-day battle with Islamic militants this month.
Police officers had gathered in a large group at the Muzzafargarh restaurant Friday, ready to move if called to the mosque. Instead, they were left picking up pieces of their friends from the street amid torn uniforms and shards of glass.
The bloodshed, as well as the increasing confrontation between hard-line Islamic factions and the government of U.S.-backed President Pervez Musharraf, has many in Pakistan and Washington fearing that the country is on the edge of upheaval.
At the Red Mosque, Musharraf's government had hoped that Friday would be a day of reconciliation. Hundreds of worshippers came for the reopening of the mosque, repainted off-white and renamed Jamia Masjid -- the Main Mosque.
Instead, the crowd forced the government-approved imam to leave, seized the mosque while yelling "Death to Musharraf, Death to America" and calling for Islamic revolution, and began splashing red paint on its minarets.
Young men wrote the name Lal Masjid on the mosque's outer walls and demanded that the government reinstate former head cleric Maulana Abdul Aziz, who was captured in a woman's burqa while fleeing the fighting this month, to give Friday prayers, the main weekly service for Muslims. A black flag with crossed swords was hoisted above the mosque.
The crowd began searching through the rubble of a women's seminary next to the mosque, which the government had bulldozed after the battle. An arm with rotting flesh was tugged out, as was bloody clothing, a jumble of bones and burned fragments of a Quran. A black shroud of cloth covered a mound on the dirt -- witnesses said it was a body pulled from the debris.
When paramilitary forces arrived, men in the crowd began hurling rocks while chanting "Allahu akbar" -- "God is great" in Arabic. Tear-gas canisters followed, pushing the men back for a few moments before they regrouped and again began throwing stones.
As the standoff between police and the crowd continued, the car bomb went off down the street.
Down the street, bodies had been thrown across the street, and blood had splattered on the ceiling of the Muzzafargarh restaurant.
"I was just 100 meters away from the hotel when I saw everything explode with a powerful bang," said Sarfraz Ahmad, a police officer.