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A rebel cleric said he and his fighters hoped their deaths would spark an Islamic revolution in Pakistan as troops blasted holes in the walls of the Red Mosque in a bid to allow women and children to escape the stand-off in Islamabad.
Troops who have surrounded the mosque in the centre of the city on Sunday set explosives to create holes in the compound, in the purported hope that anyone inside wishing to leave would at least have some opportunity.
But officials said that as the troops launched the operation some of the armed students inside the mosque - possibly numbering more than 100 in total - triggered a gun battle.
The death toll from the conflict rose to at least 21 after a lieutenant-colonel died when commandos came under fire from the compound that houses a girls' madrassa (Islamic religious school) as well as the mosque.
Pakistan's leader, General Pervez Musharraf, while desperate to avoid a blood-bath less than two miles from the Presidential Palace, has given the militants a "surrender-or-die" ultimatum.
But while many hundreds of students have emerged from the complex, it seems that a number of hardcore talibs - some of them perhaps pressured by older students - are refusing to move.
In a statement carried yesterday by newspapers in Pakistan, the radical cleric holed inside the building, Abdul Rashid Ghazi, said that if he and his followers were to die, their deaths would spark an Islamic revolution.
He has repeatedly said that he would prefer martyrdom to surrender.
"We have firm belief in God that our blood will lead to a revolution," he said.
Mr Musharraf, facing considerable political pressures unrelated to the stand-off at the mosque, is desperate not only to avoid making martyrs of Mr Ghazi but also of upsetting religious fundamentalists in the country, whose support he courts.
As a result, for all the government's rhetoric, its actual options are limited.
"So long as there are people inside who are holding innocent children and women hostages, we have to be very careful.
If we wanted to barge in guns blazing, we could have done it on day one," said the government's Information, Minister Tariq Azim.
Speaking to Dawn TV, he added: "We will have to play this wait game. It may take a while, but I think we will succeed in the end."
At least 24 people have been killed since the stand-off began.
Mr Ghazi has put the total at several times higher and said that many dead students - a large number of young women among them - have already been buried in the grounds of the complex.
A person who claimed his relative was being held against his will in the mosque told the Associated Press that up to 250 people were not being allowed to leave.
Bakht Sher said that he spoke by mobile phone with his 22-year-old nephew, Noorul Hayat, who told him that the hostages were being held in a basement area of the complex normally reserved for prayers.
He said his relative saw the body of a man who had been shot dead while trying to escape.
Mr Azim, the minister, claimed Mr Ghazi's followers had been trained in the use of automatic weapons.
"The very fact that they can use heavy automatic weapons with some expertise shows that they are not just ordinary 14-, 15-year-old students, and they keep claiming that they have enough ammunition inside to keep this fight going for one long month," he said.
The soldier who was killed in the early hours of Sunday local time was shot while overseeing an operation to blast holes in the walls of the compound.
He was shot several times and died later in hospital.
The dead soldier and the other two wounded were members of the army's Special Services Group, a specially trained force that Mr Musharraf once commanded.
- INDEPENDENT
