Female students rally at

Several thousand female Islamic students rallied at the radical Red Mosque in the Pakistani capital on Wednesday, just days after a suicide bomber killed 19 people during a protest there. The blast on Sunday targeted policemen guarding the protest by thousands of Islamists who had gathered to mark the one year anniversary of a military raid on the al-Qaeda linked mosque. Security was again tight for Wednesday’s rally called to demand the reconstruction of a seminary destroyed in the controversial raid, an AFP correspondent witnessed. Nearly 2,000 students, many clad in all-covering burqas, sat inside the mosque compound and chanted slogans against the US-backed president, Pervez Musharraf, who ordered last year’s raid which left 100 people dead. ‘We will take revenge against those who killed innocent men, women and children during the operation,’ Ume-Hassan, wife of the mosque’s former firebrand leader Abdul Aziz told the rally. ‘Our protest will continue against the forces of tyranny,’ she said as the students shouted ‘Go Musharraf Go’ and ‘Hang Musharraf’. The police formed pickets outside the compound and used metal detecting scanners to check the protesters for weapons before allowing them inside. The students became a symbol last year of the mosque’s defiance against the government, and conducted an Islamic vigilante campaign in the capital that included kidnapping several Chinese nationals they claimed were prostitutes. Government forces besieged the mosque on July 3, 2007, after a clash between police and militants in the building. Army commandos stormed it a week later, laying waste to parts of the building and leaving scores dead.