ISLAMABAD  ( 2007-07-06 20:17:30 ) : 

The government rejected a conditional surrender offer last night 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 television.

Abdul Rahid Ghazi later gave a sermon to his students at traditional on 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, with more casualties 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 an Jamia Hafsa attached to the Lal Masjid, 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 students are still inside the mosque compound, along with up to 60 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.

"The president has ordered authorities that force should not be used until we are sure that all the innocent people, who are being used as human shields, have come out," deputy information minister Tariq Azeem told AFP.

The militants inside are believed to be armed with assault rifles, grenades and petrol bombs, Interior Minister Aftab Sherpao said late on Thursday.

Ghazi and Aziz have both denied that anyone was being kept against their will.

Abdul 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.