Abdul Rashid Ghazi, the deputy leader of the hardline Red Mosque, is heading the resistance by hundreds of students and Islamic militants holed up inside and surrounded by government forces since Tuesday.

"Our blood will not go to waste. It will bring an Islamic revolution in this country," Ghazi said in his will, according to excerpts read over the telephone to AFP by a mosque source.

"If the students of all madrasas in the country stand up against this evil system they can replace it with Islamic system."

Students from religious schools or madrasas affiliated to the Red Mosque called for the imposition of Islamic Sharia law and led a Taliban-style vigilante morality campaign in the run-up to the crisis.

The final straw came after they kidnapped seven Chinese nationals, including six women, whom they accused of prostitution. China is Pakistan's closest ally.

Pakistan has around 13,000 madrasas, which have been accused of fostering extremism. Many were set up during the "jihad" against the 1979-1989 Soviet occupation of neighbouring Afghanistan.

President Pervez Musharraf has warned those holed up in the mosque -- said by security officials to include militants with links to al-Qaeda -- to surrender or be killed.

The government says 24 people have died in the standoff. Ghazi said 330 students, mostly female, were killed in clashes overnight, but officials dismissed the claim.

Ghazi, 43, said this week that he and his followers have written their last testaments, adding that they should be buried at the mosque.

"Our martyrdom will uproot this devilish and evil system. All my well-wishers and colleagues should devote their lives to end this system," Ghazi's will said.

"The students who launched a jihad against obscenity and evil did not kill anyone, they did not commit any crime against the state.

"Despite that, their bodies were riddled with bullets. These people who fired bullets into their bodies are forces of evil," it added.