Sarfraz Naeemi, Prominent Cleric, Among The Dead After Suicide Bombers Attack Pakistani Mosque, Seminary
LAHORE, Pakistan — Friday prayers had just ended when the suicide bomber walked into the seminary office of a popular anti-Taliban cleric and detonated his explosives.
There was little doubt this was a targeted assassination of a moderate religious leader who had openly challenged militancy and extremism, called suicide bombings un-Islamic and denounced the Taliban as murderers and "a stigma on Islam." He had thrown his support behind an ongoing military campaign against them.
The scenes of carnage Friday _ the bombing was echoed within minutes at a mosque elsewhere in Pakistan _ have become far too familiar in the violence-plagued country, and took the count of suicide bombings to five in eight days.
But while the attacks were stark reminders that militants remain deadly despite recent setbacks at the army's hands in the Swat Valley, they also do not appear to be achieving their apparent objectives of sowing fear, targeting opponents and destabilizing the government by showing they can strike anywhere.
President Asif Ali Zardari addressed the nation early Saturday, vowing to continue fighting the Taliban "until the end."
"We are fighting a war with those who want to impose their agenda on this nation with force and power," Zardari said. "This is the war for the survival of our country.
"These people murdered thousands of innocent people. By spreading terror in Pakistan and by scaring people, they want to take over the institutions of Pakistan. They do everything in the name of Islam, but they do not have anything to do with Islam. They are cruel. They are terrorists."
Police official Sohail Sukhera said at least one assailant entered the offices of the Jamia Naeemia seminary in the heart of Lahore shortly after the end of Friday prayers and detonated a bomb powerful enough to collapse the building. Five people died and three were wounded.
Relatives said popular cleric Sarfraz Naeemi had received death threats after denouncing the Taliban as murderers and "a stigma on Islam."
Hundreds of outraged seminary students gathered at the scene and demanded the Taliban leave Pakistan. "Down with the Taliban!" they shouted as one man writhed on the ground in anguish and others embraced in tears.
The government has vowed to rid the country of militants, and it has been emboldened by broad support for the Swat campaign from a public that has started openly denouncing the militants after years of ambivalence.
The campaign has intensified pressure on the militants in strongholds they have established in the religiously ultraconservative northwest on the border with Afghanistan.
Naeemi was the apparent target of the attack and died on his way to a hospital, said his son, Waqar.
"I was still in the mosque when I heard a big bang. We rushed toward the office and there was a smell of explosives in the air. There was blood and several people were crying in pain," Waqar said.
Another son, Raghib, vowed to carry on his father's philosophy.
"His martyrdom does not mean that it will stop the plans to support the army for the stability of Pakistan," he said. "Instead, it will accelerate that plan. We will keep on supporting the Pakistan army 'til our last breath."
Naeemi had recently led dozens of moderate clerics in meetings and lectures in which he denounced suicide attacks _ a common tactic of Pakistan's Islamist groups _ and supported the military's operation to oust the Taliban from Swat.
A leading moderate, he advocated equal access to education for women and the use of computers in schools _ ideas sharply at odds with the Taliban's harsh interpretation of Islam.
The attack was quickly condemned as un-Islamic.
"A true Muslim even cannot think of such activity," said Mufti Muneebur Rehman, a senior moderate cleric and Naeemi's friend.
"He was someone who would never speak the language of bullets, and targeting such a soft person is a brutal act," said Hamid Saeed Kazmi, Pakistan's minister for religious affairs. "Those who have done it have not served Islam. They are not Muslims. They are the enemies of Islam and enemies of Pakistan."
In the second attack around the same time Friday, a pickup truck loaded with explosives was rammed into the wall of a mosque in an area where soldiers live in Noshehra, a small city in the northwest, police official Aziz Khan said. At least four people died and more than 100 were wounded, he said.
Militants were blamed for a suicide attack a week earlier on a mosque in Upper Dir that killed at least 30 people. That blast prompted local villagers to form a civilian militia that has chased and killed several militants.
Washington strongly backs the Swat operation, which is widely viewed as a test of Pakistan's resolve to confront militancy after years of deals and policies criticized as being too soft on the militants.
Fierce fighting continued Friday in Swat, the military said, with troops capturing Chuprial town in a major battle that killed 39 militants and eight soldiers. It was the highest death toll in a single day's fighting in the offensive, which began in late April and which the army says it is close to winning.
Elsewhere Friday, gunmen in Peshawar attacked the home of Lt. Gen. Masood Aslam, the army commander of the Swat offensive, leaving him uninjured but two militants dead.
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Associated Press writers Riaz Khan in Peshawar, Munir Ahmad and Asif Shahzad in Islamabad contributed to this report.
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BABAR DOGAR | June 12, 2009 03:50 PM EST |
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