Tuesday, July 10, 2007

Red Mosque attack is ongoing, plus little video

Here a couple of seconds of video I shot this morning. Pak army holds us at a 400 meters distance from the Red Mosque, so we cant see what's happening around the mosque. Only thing is to use your ears. So the clip is nothing spectacular, but it is at at least something:



Here the rest of the story I wrote earliers this morning:

I Just came back from the vicinity of the Red Mosque or Lal Mashid. Fighting still going on. Hear a lot of explosions - probably hand grenades used by the Pak army to flush out the last militants from the basements. Also sporadic machine gun fire.

Media is not allowed entrance to the mosque. So we are kind of camping 400 meters away. As I know a little path through gardens in the area, I managed to get at 150 meters. Lots of nearby gunfire. Almost tripped over some army telephone wires. Was caught a little later by some Pak soldiers who told me to leave the area.

Anyhow. Am rather busy now. Not a lot of time. The operation will probably last another couple of hours. It is really in its final stage. Some women en children were transferred from inside the mosque to a sports stadium by the Pak authorities. Deathtoll stands currently at 40 militans dead, three SSG troops (Pak special forces) and five soldiers. These numbers are not final of course. The operation by the way is called "Operation Silence".

Must run now. Later more.

Harald Doornbos

10 comments:

Anonymous said...

Harald

I have just read that The European Commission on Tuesday slammed the Pakistani army's storming of Islamabad's controversial Red Mosque. ...."Dialogue and negotiation are a better way of solving the problem. We have a responsibility to solve this problem peacefully," she said.
I have a suspicion that "dialogue and negotiation" was not possible with majority of the people who were in the Red Mosque, but I would really like to hear your opinion.

Anonymous said...

ps. to the above

I meant the people who were in the Red Mosque at the time of the army attack.

Anonymous said...

@Ella

Europe is full of Islam-huggers.

Jacl

Anonymous said...

hey anti-muslim racist anonymous, why don't you cover your head with a pillow case and join the KKK? Don't forget kiddo, there are alot of muslims in your countries and they are your own citizens now, so get with globalisation.

Harald, I'm assuming the question you asked was open to Lebanese as well as Dutch/Europeans, I think considering the deranged kind of people hiding in the mosque, there was no talking or reasoning with them, we (unfortunately) in the middle east know that kind of person only too well. They gave them opportunity to surrender,they refused stating they wanted to die, they got their wish.
Pity whatever innocents were trapped in there with them.

Anonymous said...

I meant the question Ella asked...

jordi said...

Harald,

Rumours that the final attack on Nahr El Bared will start today or tomorrow (at 4 am? :)).
Civilians seem to have left the camp.

Do we have to store some cigarettes and soft drinks at your balcony. Or will you stay in Pak?

Anonymous said...

@ anti-speed anon

You are as anonymous as I (Jacl) am. So don't give me that crap. As far anti-muslim: I am anti religion in general. Religion is the main reason for wars.

Jacl

Anonymous said...

But I admit: Islam is one of the worst.

Jacl

Anonymous said...

jacl,
Religion is not one of the main reasons for war: people are the ONLY reason for war. People (usually men) with their greed and their craving for power and money. Religion is just the excuse, and if it wasn't there, there'd be another excuse.
I will not defend my religion to you, mainly because I don't really care what your thoughts are about it. But as for Islam being one of the worst causes for war, let me ask you just how many did the Nazi's kill? How many died in WWII? How many foreign lands did the Europeans loot, abuse and plunder?
However bad you think us muslims are, you people will always hold the record for brutality.

Harald Doornbos said...

With my last posting, I hope to have answered some questions of peope here about the storming of the Red Mosque by Pak Army.

To the stunningly beautiful Miss JORDI: Store cigarettes!!!! I'll be back in Beirut during the weekend. Tell Lebanese army to wait some days. It would be kind of cool to cover two siege-endings in one week.

to anti-speed anon: after sitting now for days next to pakistani taxi drivers in their super tiny cars, I feel very, very much like trying to reach 200 km/h in my Audi through Hamra! Nothing can stop this boy anymore.