President Musharraf pledged to combat Muslim extremists across Pakistan yesterday as furious crowds demonstrated against the storming of the Red Mosque and two suicide bomb attacks left six dead.

In a televised address to the nation, General Musharraf said those inside the mosque and its adjacent madrassa, or Muslim college, were “terrorists” who directly threatened Pakistan’s security. They had also tarnished Islam’s reputation as a tolerant and peaceful religion.

“What do we as a nation want?” he asked. “What kind of Islam do these people represent? In the garb of Islamic teaching they have been training for terrorism. They prepared the madrassa as a fortress for war and housed other terrorists in there.”

General Musharraf praised the army for wresting the mosque and its madrassa “from the hands of terrorists” and said, “I will not allow any madrassa to be used for extremism.” But thousands gathered for the funeral of Abdul Rashid Ghazi, the radical preacher who died inside the Red Mosque, and chanted “Go, Musharraf, go.”

The unrest has not spread beyond known centers of extremism, nor have the demonstrations grown strong enough to threaten General Musharraf’s grip on power. Moderate Pakistanis generally support his decision to crush the fundamentalists who had taken control of the mosque in the center of the capital, Islamabad.

The preacher’s death in the Red Mosque has made him a “martyr” in the eyes of some extremists.