ISLAMABAD, 7 July 2007 — Students under a siege at the Red Mosque in the Pakistan capital fought intense gunbattles with the security forces yesterday as Abdul Rashid Ghazi, deputy chief of the mosque declared that he and his followers would rather die than surrender.

Ghazi, younger brother of mosque chief Abdul Aziz Ghazi, who was captured on Wednesday while trying to flee the mosque dressed in a “burqa,” vowed not to give himself up to government forces on the fourth day of the bloody confrontation that has already claimed 20 lives. The government rejected a conditional surrender offer last night.

“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.

The cleric later gave a sermon to his militant students at Friday prayers in which he said they had already written their wills.

“We are sacrificing our lives for the supremacy of our religion and for the implementation of Islamic laws. We have no regrets and we will embrace martyrdom,” a mosque official quoted the cleric as saying.

“We are writing our wills, and according to those wills we must be buried in the mosque.”

Fighting resumed at sunset after a 10-hour lull. Two heavy blasts rocked the mosque, blowing big chunks of debris, believed to be part of its perimeter wall, high above the surrounding treetops.

The mosque official said four students were killed in the clash when a mortar fired by security forces hit a room in the mosque. More casualties were reported in a pre-dawn 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 the madrasa attached to the mosque, officials said.

Residents living near the mosque said the siege was taking its toll.

“The last few days have changed my son’s mind. He is 10 years old and started talking about bullets and shells,” said housewife Nasreen Jehan.

Hundreds of Islamic students are still inside the mosque compound, along with up to 60 “hardcore” armed militants, officials have said. Authorities 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.

— With input from agencies