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ISLAMABAD : Several women and children on Wednesday left a Pakistani mosque under siege after deadly clashes, while relatives were allowed to collect some female students despite a curfew, officials said.
State television said more than 25 female students had left a religious school attached to the radical Lal Masjid, or Red Mosque.
The city's top administrative official Khalid Pervez said earlier he knew of at least six women who had left, while some 250 male students said they wanted out as well.
He said many students had contacted the authorities by mobile phone.
Clerics at the mosque were discouraging female students from leaving because they were using them as human shields, he said, adding that if the women had not been there the government would have acted sooner.
Information Secretary Anwar Mehmood, who announced an 11am (0600 GMT) deadline for students to surrender, said some women and children had left the mosque compound.
Troops meanwhile arranged a bus to pick up people who had gathered at a nearby market to transport them to the mosque compound.
"We have been waiting here since daybreak, begging the security forces to let us get back our girls," Naeem Baig, whose niece studies at the mosque's school, told AFP.
"My brother is in the bus, he was desperate to take his 22-year-old daughter," said Baig, from the northwestern town of Haripur. "There are dozens more people who want to meet their relatives and take them back home."
He said troops had also allowed some people go to the seminary on foot.
The seminary has enrolled more than 4,000 female students, according to the mosque administration.
It is run by Umme Hassan, wife of the Red Mosque's top cleric, Abdul Aziz. -AFP/ch
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