By IANS
Islamabad : Bodies of 10 foreigners were recovered from the Lal Masjid complex following the Pakistan military assault, authorities here said.
Details and photographs of the foreigners would be released shortly, said interior ministry spokesman Javed Iqbal Cheema.
President Pervez Musharraf said prior to the operations that began July 3 that armed militants, including foreigners and those of the Jaish-e-Mohammed with links to Al Qaeda, were holed up in the mosque and the two nearby seminaries.
The Dawn newspaper Sunday quoted Cheema as saying that all the girl students of the Jamia Hafsa seminary attached to the mosque and children rescued from the complex had been sent home.
Of the 628 detained male students of the Jamia Rasheedia seminary, 472 had been released while 156 others were in judicial lock up on different charges.
About the missing students, he said a special cell had been set up where parents and relatives of 36 students had submitted applications. Thirty-two applicants had been reunited with their relatives, he added.
He said that since the start of the operation July 3, 103 people, including Abdul Rashid Ghazi, the mosque’s deputy cleric, were killed.
The opposition and clergy have said that at least 1,000 people died in the nine-day operations. But Cheema said some people were “exaggerating” the casualty figures.
Cheema said 22 charred bodies were recovered from two rooms in the complex.