Pakistanis protest U.S. campaign

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan -- Thousands of Islamic militants converged on a southern Pakistani town Sunday, fighting pitched battles with police and paramilitary troops as they surged toward an air base that U.S. personnel are reportedly using. \nOne person was killed and 24 were injured in daylong battles around Jacobabad, police said. The desert city is the home to one of two Pakistani air bases made available to U.S. forces to support the air campaign against Osama bin Laden and his Afghanistan-based terror network. \nAs anger grew over U.S. air strikes on Afghanistan, one militant leader exhorted followers to set Shabaz Air Base in Jacobabad on fire "at any cost,'' and another called on Pakistan's generals to overthrow the country's president, military ruler Gen. Pervez Musharraf. \nPolice and paramilitary troops from the Interior Ministry fired tear gas to repel hundreds of demonstrators marching toward the air base. Thousands of others massed along roads outside Jacobabad, prevented from reaching the city and base by a wall of armed authorities. Protesters also battled police in two villages outside the city. \nPolice said about 400 people had been arrested -- most in advance in an attempt to prevent the protests. Jacobabad, a city of about 200,000, was sealed off to outsiders. \nIn a related demonstration several miles outside Jacobabad, one demonstrator was killed and 10 were injured, authorities and protest leaders said. They said they were still gathering information about the protest. \nThe father of Mukhtar Khosio, the demonstrator who died, addressed protesters after learning about his son's death. "I have seven sons and just one has died,'' Maulana Shabir Khosio said. "I am ready to sacrifice six others too for the cause of Islam.'' \nIn the village of Shikar Pur, about 20 miles north of Jacobabad, police opened fire on a surging crowd of demonstrators, authorities said. Fourteen people, including a police officer, were wounded, said Raza Khan, a doctor at Shikar Pur Hospital. \nPakistan's military government has officially denied that U.S. armed services personnel and aircraft are in the country. The government insists it will not allow Pakistani territory to be used for attacks on Afghanistan. \nBut on Thursday, Pakistani officials confirmed on condition of anonymity that the country has allowed U.S. military aircraft to land inside its borders. They said Musharraf also granted the United States use of at least two air bases during airstrikes inside Afghanistan. \nProtest leaders have called for a nationwide strike on Monday -- the day Secretary of State Colin Powell is to arrive in Pakistan to discuss the anti-terror campaign. \nThe trouble in downtown Jacobabad started when a crowd that protest leaders from the Jamiat Ulema-e-Islam party said numbered in the thousands gathered outside a hotel and began marching toward the air base. \nHeavily armed police who had been patrolling Jacobabad's streets for days first warned them to stop, then fired tear gas shells into the crowd and bullets into the air. Protesters threw stones, then broke up into smaller groups that roved the city. \nAt a roadblock 15 miles south of town, nearly 2,500 demonstrators -- a caravan of buses and pedestrians that came from all over Pakistan -- waited at roadblocks. Police stopped them from proceeding to Jacobabad to join the protest. After a tense standoff that lasted for hours, they agreed to disperse. \nThe presence of U.S. personnel in Pakistan is extremely controversial in this Muslim country of 145 million people. \nIslamic religious parties sympathetic to Afghanistan's ruling Taliban consider it a betrayal that their government is helping U.S.-led attempts to destroy terrorist installations in Afghanistan that belong to bin Laden, the top suspect in the Sept. 11 attacks on the United States. \nMilitant leaders have called for attacks on Shabaz and Pasni Air Base, another installation U.S. personnel are said to be using. \nIn Karachi, Qazi Hussain Ahmed, president of Jamaat-e-Islami, the country's largest religious party, addressed a rally of 12,000 Sunday and called on Pakistan's generals to topple Musharraf like he ousted Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif two years ago. \n"Musharraf has become a threat to the country,'' Ahmed said. "If Musharraf is not removed within a week, he vowed, "millions of people will march toward Islamabad to kick him out.''