Miran Shah (Pakistan), July 30 (AP): Pro-Taliban militants seized control of a shrine in northwestern Pakistan and renamed it after Islamabad’s Lal Masjid, while 10 people died in violence today near the Afghan border, officials said.

About 70 pro-Taliban militants occupied the shrine of renowned Pashtun freedom fighter Sahib Turangzai and its accompanying mosque at the town of Lakarai in Mohmand tribal region Sunday, a militant representative and a local official said separately.

The militants declared their support for the radical leaders of the Lal Masjid that Pakistan’s army stormed this month after its clerics launched a Taliban-style anti-vice campaign in the capital.

As well as renaming the mosque in Lakarai after the Lal Masjid, the militants also vowed to set up a girls’ seminary at the site — reminiscent of the one in Islamabad where the anti-vice campaign was centred.

Authorities demolished that seminary last week after the mosque siege that left 102 people dead and triggered reprisal attacks by militants, particularly in the restive northwest.

“We will ensure education here for students who were dispersed after the operation against Lal Masjid in Islamabad,” Khalid Omar, a man who claims to speak for the militants, said in telephone calls to journalists in Peshawar.

Turangzai was a religious and nationalist leader who led Pashtun fighters against British colonial forces, and who died in the early 1900s. Ghazi was the deputy head of the Islamabad mosque and he died in the siege.

A government official in Mohmand, who sought anonymity because he was not authorised to speak to journalists, confirmed the militants had taken control of the shrine. He said authorities have sought the help of tribal elders to get the militants to leave the area.