Author:
Publication: Rediff on Net
Date: October 24, 2001
URL: http://www.rediff.com/us/2001/oct/24ny7.htm
Pakistan border guards on Wednesday
refused to let in the bodies of eight of the 35 Harkat-ul-Mujahideen militants
killed during an American air strike on Kabul, officials said.
The members killed were from the
Pakistani city of Lahore, and included senior leader Ustad Farooq.
"We had instructions from higher
authorities not to receive the bodies," an official at the Torkham crossing
point in the eastern province of Bakhtiar Khan told a new agency.
Mufti Jamal, a cleric from the radical
Islamic Jamiat Ulema-e-Islam party, told a news agency that the men were
in Kabul to wage a jihad.
Harkat, which had already been banned
by US for its alleged links with Laden, sought to explain to the media
in Islamabad that its fighters were in Kabul in their personal capacity.
Earlier, security was beefed up,
as pro-Taleban religious parties decided to have a "befitting funeral"
for the Pakistani fighters.
Their bodies were expected to arrive
later in the day in Karachi.
Agencies
