As Pakistan forces continue to beseige Islamabad's Red Mosque, the number of people killed in the standoff so far remains unclear.
The official tally is 24, including a Pakistani Lieutenant-Colonel killed in operations overnight.
But the Taliban-style extremists, holed up inside the mosque, claim 300 people, mostly young girls, were killed overnight when troops blew up a part of the surrounding wall.
Pakistan has held back from storming the compound because there could be up to 2500 human shield hostages inside, some of them children as young as 5 years-old.
The compound houses a boys and a girls school. The students were inside when radical cleric Abdul Rashid Ghazi barricaded them in last Tuesday after clashes between troops and his armed followers.
Some students have emerged but it has proved very difficult for the authorities to know who is a militant and who is a genuine student.
The elder brother of the cleric tried to escape dressed as a woman on Wednesday.
The younger Ghazi says he prefers martyrdom to giving up, in the hope of sparking an Islamic revolution in Pakistan.
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