DIR, July 4: Worried parents and guardians of students of the Lal Masjid and Jamia Hafsa from the district are facing problems in reaching their children and taking them out of the seminary in Islamabad.

People from different areas of Upper Dir whose children are studying in the seminary have gone to Islamabad but they have no access to them.

Some parents told Dawn by telephone that they had been moving from pillar to post, but could not meet their children.

As fear gripped the parents after casualties in the ongoing standoff, some 20 more students hailing from the Dir Upper district have been identified as their parents are struggling to reach to them.“Now I am in front of the Lal Masjid to take out my two daughters, but neither I am allowed to meet them nor they are allowed to leave the premises,” Ahmad Sher, a resident of remote Doog Dara area in Dir Upper, told this correspondent from Islamabad. He said his family was worried about the children.

Four other children, two girls and two boys, from Dir are also studying in the Lal Masjid. Among them, Mukhtiar has been studying in the seminary for two years.

The father of these children said they had succeeded in taking the girls from the seminary to Rawalpindi, but the girls were not willing to come back to home.

“Our colleagues are being martyred and we cannot leave them in lurch. We will go back to the madressah and will prefer to die, instead of going home,” the girls were quoted as saying by their father Gul Yousaf.