Following is the chronology of events relating to the Lal Masjid standoff in Pakistan:
March 27: Female students abduct three women they accuse of running a brothel, later seize two policemen. All are released after the women supposedly repent and are shown to the media wearing burqas.
April 6: Mosque sets up Islamic Shariah court. Mosque chief Abdul Aziz pledges “thousands” of suicide attacks if the government tries to shut it down.
April 9: Shariah court passes fatwa against Pakistan Tourism Minister Nilofar Bakhtiar after she is pictured hugging a parachuting instructor.
April 10: Government says it has blocked the mosque’s illegal website and radio station.
May 19: Students kidnap four policemen after the arrest of around a dozen mosque supporters. Two days later, students from a seminary linked to Red Mosque kidnap another two policemen. All are eventually freed.
June 23: Students kidnap nine people, including six Chinese women and a Chinese man, from an acupuncture clinic, claiming it is a brothel.
July 3: Pakistani security forces trade gunfire with militant madrassa students in the heart of Islamabad leaving 10 people dead and over 130 injured in a sudden flare-up of violence sparked by paramilitary deployment around the Lal Masjid.
July 4: Government spurns attempts by radical clerics of Lal Masjid to work out a negotiated settlement and ask them to surrender along with weapons as the number of people dead in the stand off between security forces and militant mosque students climbs to 21.
July 5: As the Pakistan military scale up its offensive on Lal Masjid through selective bombardment using helicopter gunships to flush out holed up militants.
July 6: Intense gunbattles erupt between militants holed up inside the mosque and security forces surrounding it as the leading cleric of the mosque reversed his offer for conditional surrender.
July 7: President Pervez Musharraf says they must surrender failing which they would all be killed.
July 9: Government holds last-ditch talks with a radical cleric and hundreds of militants but there are little indications of a breakthrough.
July 10: Pakistan launches a full fledged military operation to flush out the militants, after final round of talks for a peaceful solution to the week-long standoff fails.