The pro-Western Government of Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf came under further pressure today as running gun battles erupted in the capital city.

Nine people were killed in exchanges between Islamist extremists and Government troops at a radical mosque in Islamabad.

Fighting broke out less than three miles from President Musharraf's offices when student followers of the notorious Red Mosque, including dozens of women in burqas, rushed toward a nearby police checkpoint.

Police responded with tear gas and the students retreated but at least four masked militants were seen to fire shots.

Four of the Islamist students were killed along with three civilians, one soldier and one journalist, the Pakistani Interior Ministry said. A total of 148 people were injured, mostly by tear gas fired by security forces.

The clashes later continued, with extremists pelting two Government buildings with rocks before attempting to set them ablaze. A dozen cars at one of the buildings, the Ministry of the Environment, were also torched.

Today's violence are being seen as the latest part of an increasingly prominent Islamic fundamentalist resurgence in Pakistan, in an apparent backlash against General Musharraf's staunch support for President Bush's war on terror.

At nightfall today Khalid Pervez, the city’s top security official, said that a ceasefire had been reached with the militants but that the Government was considering "all options" in its battle against them.

"They can’t be allowed to sort of have a state within the state and assume powers. Of course this can’t be allowed," Mr Pervez said.

The Islamabad clashes took place only two and a half miles from the Government district, in which houses the offices and compound of General Musharraf. Shops all around the area were shuttered and closed during the fighting.

Authorities have been at loggerheads with the mosque for months after its radical followers demanded that a Taleban-style version of Islamic law be imposed in the capital.

The mosque's student followers have carried out a string of kidnappings of police officers and alleged prostitutes, as well as several Chinese nationals, and have threatened suicide attacks if security forces intervene.

Later today, Islamist militants followed up the Islamabad violence by launching protests elsewhere in the country.

In the western city of Quetta, a stronghold of Muslim activism, about 200 seminary students and members of a radical group staged a demonstration in support of the Islamabad radicals.

Marching down a main street in the city, they burned tyres and chanted 'Death to America' and 'Death to Bush and Pervez.'

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