By IANS
Islamabad : The Pakistani army officer who led the operation against the besieged Lal Masjid, where militants are holed up, died of critical injuries in hospital, even as the cleric of the mosque said he was willing to face charges against him in court.
Haroon Islam, who was leading the operation against hardline militants in the mosque, died in a hospital in Rawalpindi, some 30 km from here, after he was fired upon, an army spokesperson said Sunday.
The spokesperson added that two security men were also injured Saturday when two unidentified men fired at them outside the Lal Masjid, Xinhua reported.
On Saturday, the fifth day of the mosque crisis, Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf asserted that the remaining militants in the mosque would either surrender or die.
"They should not prolong, they should surrender and hand over their weapons, otherwise they risk being killed," he said.
"The government has enough power and no one can stand before its might," he said, "Our concern is for children and women and we are showing lot of patience and restraint."
Religious Affairs Minister Ejaz-ul-Haq led a delegation of 13 clerics to Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz Saturday, seeking safe passage for the Lal Masjid cleric and his men, Daily Times said Sunday.
Haq, son of former military dictator Ziaul Haq, has been engaged in talks with the Lal Masjid clergy since the standoff began in January.
Meanwhile, 50 clerics of the Jamaat Ahl-e-Sunnat Pakistan sect issued a 'fatwa' (edict) against the Lal Masjid administration and declared the actions taken by clerics Maulana Abdul Aziz and Maulana Abdur Rashid Ghazi to be "un-Islamic," the newspaper said.
The edict charged that the Ghazi brothers had used the mosque "for unlawful and immoral activities, which were un-Islamic".
DPA added that Abdul Rashid Ghazi, the hard-line Pakistani cleric, has agreed to face the charges against him in court provided the government delayed military action for three weeks.
Ghazi has been in the heavily fortified mosque since Tuesday, when thousands of military troops started an operation to flush out his followers from the mosque after they attacked a police checkpoint.
"The security operation should be delayed for three weeks, and if there are any charges against me they should be decided in the court during this period," he was cited by the Geo news channel Saturday as telling the president of ruling Pakistan Muslim League party Chaudhry Shujaat Hussain over the phone.
"If the court finds me innocent, I should be given safe passage to leave the mosque," said Ghazi who has repeatedly vowed over the past five days that he would die rather than give himself in to the authorities.
"We can never turn ourselves in. We will accept martyrdom but will not surrender," the leader of the militants Abdul Rashid Ghazi told Geo Friday.
Authorities have said several criminal cases were registered against him, including the kidnapping of several alleged prostitutes in his campaign for enforcement of Taliban-style strict Islamic law in the country.
The extremist cleric also requested Hussain to move a dead body to the hospital that had been lying at the main gate of the mosque and started to rot, assuring him that his followers would not open fire at the approaching ambulance.
Meanwhile, a powerful blast, followed by heavy exchange of fire, was heard at the besieged mosque Saturday evening. Clouds of smoke were seen rising from the mosque, a witness said.