ISLAMABAD, July 12 (APP): Mediamen visited the Jamia Hafsa here on Thursday and saw the centre of the militancy, which exposed the tall claims of the madrassa management about promotion of Islamic Education. The visit left no doubt that instead of being a seminary imparting religious education, it was a centre of militancy, according to a PTV report.
The government had held repeated negotiations with the management of Lal Masjid to save the lives of maximum number of innocent children and women, but all these efforts proved futile in the face of rigidness of Maulana Abdul Rashid Ghazi Naib Khateeb of the seminary.
Finally in the early hours of July 10 the law enforcing agencies had to launch an operation against the extremists in the Jamia Hafsa.
At roof top of the Jamia Hafsa extremists had piled up sand bags to make their pickets and resort to firing on the security forces.
The operation by security forces against the extremists continued almost 36 hours during which the militants gave strict resistance.
The ammunition, rocket launchers, machine guns, hand grenades, petrol bombs and suicide bombing equipment recovered from the Jamia Hafsa are indicative of the large scale preparations made by the militants for confrontation.
The children studying in the Madrassa were used to be brain washed and given military training.
All the male and female students were not allowed to go home, while their parents were kept at distance from them whenever they come to meet.
The rooms for meeting between parents and children were so constructed that they remained separated by a net of iron rods, presenting the scene of the meeting place in a jail rather than in a madrassa.
The rooms give the impression that the parents were meeting with dangerous criminals not their children.