Lahore:
Even as a complete blackout -connected areas near the Indian border, where increased security measures were rolled out to create national defense, residents remained effortlessly.
Despite coming under the missile fire the night before, the population of these front-line villages stood their soil, with nerves of steel and spirits unbroken, ready to stare down the barrel and go toe to toe with the lands of the country.
“Four missiles coming from India landed a few hundred meters from where I stood in my fields within eight minutes at Markaz Taiba, Murideke – a complex that houses colleges for boys and girls, a university, a hospital, mosque and vivid connections,” said lawyer Sheikh Tamoir, a local leader and farmer.
The first missile, he remembered, shook the earth like an earthquake, and sent villagers in Nangar Sadain, shrunk out of their homes.
Later, another three missiles followed. A tore through the palatial mosque, another hit Safa Academy, while the remaining two hit the residential quarters.
The assault knocked out security schemes on Markaz Gates and opened the flooding gates for residents nearby to rush in for rescue efforts.
Sheikh Tamoir said that the local community on its own saved the women in Markaz and moved them to nearby houses for security. He added that instead of driving to cover, the entire area converged at Markaz to show solidarity, as it is a very considered place where children receive education and where people from other areas come to subsidized treatment.
He said he was in the advanced years of his life and dismissed any kind of terrorism and had never seen any kind of training that took place at Markaz, so much less ammunition training.
“Hafiz Muhammad Saeed is a fiery speaker, and that’s pretty much that,” he said, adding that the whole area could guarantee this.
A complete blackout was observed after the attack and rescue. But of Fajr was moral sky high, spirits that were not shaken and resolved stiff as ever. The mood was so accused that an almost riot broke out when law enforcement authorities were cut off by the mosque, preventing residents from offering morning beans.
He said police under pressure from the locals eventually picked up, and the residents offered prayers in the broken mosque – standing their grounds, both literally and in spirit.
Those who lost their lives included the mosque’s prayer leader, Haji Abdul Malik, who also served in Markaz as responsible for CCTV cameras.
Each time a theft took place in the area, the locals would turn to him for recordings from the cameras stationed around Markaz to help track guilty. The other two martyrs were the mosque’s caretaker, Khadim and Muezzin, the one who calls the believers for prayer.
