ISLAMABAD, July 6: An eleven-member women delegation of the Muttahida Majlis-i-Amal on Friday night met the Lal Masjid cleric, Abdul Rashid Ghazi, to persuade him to surrender and save the lives of innocent children, women and vulnerable people trapped inside the Lal Masjid-Jamia Hafsa complex.

The delegation members will meet him again on Saturday morning after Maulana Ghazi told them that he could not talk to them at the moment because of security reasons.

Led by Senator Dr Firdaus, the delegation comprising Senator Afia Zia and MNAs Samia Raheel Qazi, Inayat Begum and Jamila Ahmed and wife of MMA president Qazi Hussain Ahmed, marched from parliament lodges to Lal Masjid to meet the cleric. A group of local ulema also joined the delegation.

They told reporters that they wanted to take possession of bodies for burial, injured for medical treatment and get the vulnerable children and women students out of the mosque and the seminary.

Security agencies stopped the delegation at a distance of one kilometre from Lal Masjid. The women parliamentarians kept waiting there for three hours and also contacted Information Minister Mohammad Ali Durrani on phone. The delegation was allowed to move ahead after getting a green signal from the mosque administration.

They said they had never supported the agenda Ghazi brothers had been adopting to put pressure on the government. “We are also against the use of military force to suppress them.”

“Both sides should exercise maximum restraint. Both sides should show flexibility in their stance to save the lives of those who have nothing to do with the ongoing war of nerves,” said Senator Kausar Firdaus in a brief chat with reporters.

The members of delegation appealed to the mosque and seminary administration to put down their arms and surrender to the authorities so that this nerve-racking saga came to an end.

They said the government should stop military operation to end more bloodshed and evacuate the besieged people.