ISLAMABAD, Pakistan - The top cleric at a besieged mosque in Pakistan's capital accused security forces on Saturday of killing more than 70 of his students but said he and his supporters preferred martyrdom to capture.
Explosions and intense gunfire continued into Saturday as thousands of troops ringing Lal Masjid, or Red Mosque, attempted to end a five-day standoff but held back from an all-out assault.
Although the government says only 19 people have died since Tuesday, Abdul Rashid Ghazi, the mosque's defiant cleric, told the local Geo TV channel that more than 70 of his students had been slain by government gunfire.
"There are 70 to 80 bodies of our students," he said, a claim that could not be independently verified.
The siege has added to the woes of President Gen. Pervez Musharraf, who faces a gathering storm of domestic Islamic extremism as well as a popular backlash from his bungled attempt at firing the country's chief justice.
Authorities on Saturday were investigating what may have been the fourth attempt on his life.
Shots rang out as Musharraf took off from a military base near the capital Friday morning, apparently fired from a neighborhood directly under the flight path, officials and witnesses said.
There have already been three attempts to assassinate Musharraf since his decision to side with the United States in its war on terror.
It was not clear whether the incident was linked to the siege, but radical Islamic groups have staged daily street protests throughout the standoff.
Troops surrounded the mosque and an adjoining women's seminary on Tuesday after deadly clashes between government security forces and Islamic students who have sought to impose Taliban-style rule in the city.
Militant students had streamed out of the mosque to confront security forces deployed there following the kidnapping of six alleged Chinese prostitutes. The brief abduction, which drew a protest from Beijing, was the latest of provocations by the mosque stretching back six months.
While more than 1,200 people, mainly students from the mosque's two Islamic schools, have fled the complex, officials say up to 100 armed militants and an unknown number of students remain inside.
Ghazi, who has sought safe passage for himself and his followers, reiterated Saturday that he would not surrender.
"We are ready to lay down arms, but we should not be arrested," he said, adding, "We are ready to be martyred."
Pakistan's Interior Minister Aftab Khan Sherpao rejected those terms, insisting that Ghazi would have to face the courts.
Security officials deployed near the mosque said they were continuing to demolish sections of the mosque's perimeter. A dozen loud explosions rocked the area Saturday, and gunfire rang out as a delegation of clerics headed towards the mosque in hopes of persuading Ghazi to surrender.
Syed Bilal, one of the delegates, told reporters that Ghazi was ready to meet with them but that security officials had stopped them from going inside because of the intense gunfire.
After Bilal insisted on going inside the mosque, police pushed him into a car and sped away, said Samia Qazi, a lawmaker at the scene. She condemned the police action, saying the government was trying to avoid giving clerics a role in ending the siege.
Several female lawmakers from extremist parties rallied near the Parliament building Saturday, urging the government to hold talks with Ghazi to peacefully resolve the standoff. They also asked that women and children be allowed to leave the mosque.
Before dawn, police seized control of one of Ghazi's seminaries in another area of Islamabad.
