KARACHI, Aug 23 (AFP) - Pakistani police raided a string of mosques and seminaries in search of illegal weapons here Thursday amid a surprise crackdown on religious extremists and militant groups.
"We have raided 10 seminaries and mosques and recovered some weapons including pistols and a rifle. We have also arrested around 25 members of two main sectarian groups," senior police officer Tariq Jamil said.
He said Sunni extremist group Sipah-i-Sahaba (SSP) deputy provincial chief Abdul Ghafoor Nadeem was among those arrested, along with members of Shiite party Tehreek-i-Jafria (TJP).
Both groups are accused to fuelling sectarian violence which has seen hundreds of members of both sects gunned down around Pakistan in recent years.
"We will release the detainees if they produce valid licences for their weapons," Jamil said.
Police said the action was part of an ongoing nationwide campaign to recover illegal weapons, but Islamist leaders warned the provincial Sindh government was "playing with fire".
"The raids at mosques will create a wave of unrest in the country and we strongly condemn this totally uncalled for provokation," SSP chief Maulana Azam Tariq told AFP.
"They are playing with fire ... Some fools in the government are trying to create anarchy."
Sindh TJP chief Hasan Turabi said the raids were an attack on the "entire Shiite community".
"These are not offices of TJP, these are prayer places. We strongly condemn it," he said.
Earlier police said they released almost 200 members of militant groups fighting Indian rule in Kashmir who were arrested for ignoring a ban on public fundraising for jihad, or holy war.
Police said the men were freed around midnight Wednesday on assurances they would obey a provincial order to remove militant sign-boards and public donation boxes.
The activists, mostly members of the Lashkar-e-Taiba, Al-Badar, Jaish-e-Mohammad and Harkatul Mujahideen, were rounded up in a lightning police operation overnight Tuesday.
They are some of the most prominent Islamic militant groups operating in Indian-controlled Kashmir where a bloody Muslim separatist insurgency has claimed more than 35,000 lives in the past 12 years.
India accuses Islamabad of abetting "cross-border terrorism" in the Muslim-majority Himalayan state and points to the ease with which Pakistan-based militants cross the disputed Kashmiri border.
Islamabad denies the charge and offers open diplomatic support to what it describes as the legitimate "freedom struggle" of Kashmiri Muslims.
But the military government has been trying to respond to international and domestic pressure to contain religious extremist groups without angering the powerful forces of Islamic conservatism in the country.
The crackdown on public fund-raising and signs in Sindh, announced earlier this week, has not been matched in other provinces, leading to confusion about the federal government's stance.
Officials in Punjab, Pakistan's most populous province and the key area of public support for jihad groups fighting in Kashmir, said there were no plans to follow Sindh's move.
Interior ministry officials in the capital Islamabad were not available to comment Thursday.
Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf last week clamped an immediate ban on two underground sectarian extremist groups, the Sunni Lashkar-i-Jhangvi and its Shiite rival Sipah-e-Mohammad.
The general also warned Sipah-i-Sahaba and Tehreek-i-Jafria that they were under close scrutiny.
Police in the Punjab capital Lahore last week arrested more than 200 people in a similar sweep against sectarian extremists, but there has been no move in the province against groups campaigning for jihad in Kashmir.