ISLAMABAD, Pakistan (AP) – Leaders of a besieged radical mosque in the capital remained defiant as a deadline calling for their immediate surrender passed Wednesday, a day after clashes there killed at least nine people.

But more than 340 of their followers surrendered as army troops, some inside armored personnel carriers, tightened their stranglehold on the Lal Masjid, or Red Mosque, in the heart of Islamabad, said the capital’s top security official Khalid Pervez.

The militants were ordered to lay down their arms and surrender by 11 a.m. local time.

“The deadline has expired but we are not going to start any action immediately. We do not want bloodshed. We are reasonably sure that better sense will prevail,” Pervez said.

He said the government is giving $83 to each person who surrenders to help them return home.

As the deadline passed, the mosque’s deputy leader Abdul Rashid Ghazi said he was prepared to talk with the government but added, “We will continue to defend ourselves.”

Mr. Ghazi told a local television channel that he was not aware of any surrender deadline.

Those who surrendered came from the mosque and an adjacent seminary for women, Mr. Pervez said.

The events came after a day of bloody clashes in Islamabad at the mosque between security forces and militants living inside the sprawling mosque, which has been at loggerheads with the government. The violence was sparked when male and female student followers of the mosque – some of them armed – rushed toward a police checkpoint.

The bloodshed added to a sense of crisis in Pakistan, where President General Musharraf already faces emboldened militants near the Afghan border and a pro-democracy movement triggered by his botched attempt to fire the country’s chief justice.

Police and paramilitary troops closed streets around the Red Mosque and in the nearby government district, posting armored vehicles in front of Parliament and mounting machine-guns on turrets.

Pakistani officials said nine people were killed in Tuesday’s clash: four students, three civilians, one soldier and a journalist. About 150 people were reported injured, most of them by tear gas fired by security forces.

Mr. Ghazi told the AP that 20 of his students had been killed by security forces, including two young men as they were climbing to the top of the mosque for morning prayers Wednesday.

A young woman was also shot and wounded on the roof of the adjacent women’s seminary.

“She was shot by sniper fire. They are shooting directly at us,” he said in a telephone interview. Ghazi said there were no negotiations under way with the government to end the standoff.

After a meeting of top officials early Wednesday including Mr. Musharraf, Deputy Interior Minister Zafar Warriach said the government had imposed an immediate curfew on the area around the mosque.

Mr. Warriach said authorities had run out of patience after a six-month standoff.

“The government has decided that those people from the madrassa who are defaming Pakistan and Islam will face an operation,” Mr. Warriach said.

Despite the curfew, sporadic gunfire rang out into the early hours of Wednesday near the mosque, which lies near a busy shopping area about 2.5 miles from the city’s government district.

The violence dramatically deepened a standoff at the fortress-like mosque, whose clerics have challenged the government by sending students from the mosque’s madrassas to kidnap alleged prostitutes and police in a Taliban-style anti-vice campaign.

Some accuse intelligence agencies of encouraging the crisis to justify prolonging military rule – a conspiracy theory with considerable traction in Pakistan’s intrigue-ridden politics.

Plans for Mr. Musharraf, a close American ally who seized power in a 1999 coup, to ask lawmakers for a new five-year term this fall are in doubt because of rising opposition.

Yet the general’s failure to crack down on the clerics has dented his credentials as a bulwark against extremism – diminishing his worth to Washington, his key international backer.

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Associated Press reporters Munir Ahmad and Sadaqat Jan in Islamabad contributed to this report.