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ISLAMABAD - A Pakistani cleric besieged in a mosque in Islamabad declared that he and his followers would rather die than surrender as police early Saturday stormed a seminary linked to the mosque and arrested dozens of students.
Gunmen earlier fired on President Pervez Musharraf's plane with anti-aircraft guns in an attack officials said had possible links to the mosque stand-off. Musharraf was unharmed in the incident.
Abdul Rashid Ghazi, deputy leader of the pro-Taliban Lal Masjid, or Red Mosque, vowed not to give himself up to government forces as the bloody confrontation which has already claimed 19 lives entered a fifth day with fresh clashes which sent flames and smoke rising above the mosque.
The government had rejected a conditional surrender offer by Ghazi, whose brother Abdul Aziz was captured on Wednesday while trying to flee the mosque dressed in a burqa.
"We have decided that we can be martyred but we will not surrender. We are ready for our heads to be cut off but we will not bow to them," Ghazi told the private Geo television station.
In a major development, police seized control of a seminary run by clerics from the embattled mosque to prevent radical students opening up a second front in the standoff.
"Police stormed into Jamia Faridia and arrested dozens of students and shifted them to an unknown place," a senior security official told AFP.
Aziz was the principal of the Jamia Faridia, which police described as the "powerhouse" for the Red Mosque, with several students involved in the confrontation three kilometres (two miles) away.
"It is serious blow to the Red Mosque cleric (Ghazi) and will further weaken his position," the official said.
Fresh gunfire and blasts also erupted at the Red Mosque after a seven-hour lull but officials said security forces had not stormed it yet.
"We are not making any advances, this is part of the operation to secure the release of women and children held hostage by the cleric," a security official told AFP.
Militant students lobbed grenades and petrol bombs at the security forces, who responded by firing, he added. It was not immediately known if there were any new casualties.
Ghazi has refused to meet a delegation of religious leaders and lawmakers trying to seek evacuation of stranded children inside a seminary at the mosque, saying he could not do so because of his "security plan."
Earlier, two heavy blasts rocked the mosque, blowing big chunks of debris, believed to be part of its perimeter wall, high above the surrounding treetops.
A mosque official said four students were killed in the clash when a mortar fired by security forces hit a room in the mosque, with more casualties in an earlier skirmish. There was no independent confirmation.
During a lunchtime relaxation of the shoot-on-sight curfew in force around the complex, militants shot and wounded a man coming to see his daughter inside an Islamic school attached to the mosque, officials said.
Hundreds of Islamic students are still inside the mosque compound, along with up to 60 "hardcore" armed militants, officials have said.
Musharraf had earlier ordered that no military action should be taken until women and children were out of the mosque, but repeated that only an unconditional surrender was acceptable, officials said.
Ghazi and Aziz have both denied that anyone was being kept against their will.
Aziz urged his followers to give themselves up on Thursday in a bizarre interview with state television conducted while wearing the burqa in which he was captured.
Musharraf, a key US ally who is facing a political crisis ahead of elections later this year after ousting the country's chief justice, has received a popularity boost at home since finally cracking down on the mosque.
The clerics led a vigilante morality campaign in Islamabad, which included the abduction of police officers and people accused of running brothels, as well as raids on music and DVD shops.
Meanwhile shots were fired after Musharraf's aircraft flew from a military base to visit flood-hit southern Pakistan, in a sign that Islamic extremists are still targeting the military ruler following four assassination attempts.
"It was an unsuccessful attempt to shoot the president's plane," one security official told AFP.
The interior ministry said two anti-aircraft guns and a machinegun were found on the roof of a house in Rawalpindi, near Islamabad, and a suspect was arrested. - AFP/ir
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