The head of a radical Pakistani mosque at the centre of a bloody stand-off with security forces has been arrested while trying to escape from the mosque in the capital Islamabad, police said.
The cleric, Abdul Aziz, was arrested while trying to slip out of the mosque while clad in a woman's burqa, said police chief Iftikhar Ahmed Chaudhry.
Earlier, nearly 700 radical Muslim students surrendered at the besieged mosque, but thousands of militants remained inside a day after 11 people were killed in clashes.
Hundreds of soldiers and police sealed off the mosque and imposed an indefinite curfew after yesterday's bloodshed, as the government extended a deadline for students to lay down arms.
The violence erupted after a months-long stand-off between the authorities and a Taliban-style movement based at Lal Masjid, or Red Mosque, about two kilometres from parliament and Islamabad's protected diplomatic enclave.
Soldiers moved 12 armoured personnel carriers, mounted with machineguns, into the area as gunfire subsided overnight. Growing numbers of students took up an offer of safe passage and 5,000 rupees ($85) and left the mosque as a deadline for students to surrender passed at 1pm.
Nearly 700, including over 100 women and girls, deserted the mosque but up to 5,000 people remained inside, officials said. "There was shooting all night. I am leaving, what else to do, I don't want to get killed," said Wahid (18) as he left the mosque.
"I don't have a weapon. I don't even know how to use them."
Men who surrendered were herded onto buses while the women, clad in black, all-enveloping burqas, were released. Liberal politicians have for months pressed President Pervez Musharraf to crack down on Lal Masjid's clerics, who have threatened suicide attacks if force was used against them.
Deputy Interior Minister Zafar Warraich said armed resistors would be shot on sight. "A bullet will be responded with by a bullet," he said. The violence comes at a bad time for Musharraf. He is preparing for presidential and general elections and is already struggling to dampen a campaign by lawyers and the opposition against his suspension of the country's top judge in March.