Pakistan took the battle against Islamic extremists to its borderlands with Afghanistan yesterday, as violence spread from a military stand-off with militants sheltering in a mosque in Islamabad, the capital.

Troops were deployed to the North West Frontier Province after a militant mullah declared holy war on the Government because of its handling of the six-day siege at Lal Masjid – the Red Mosque.

The deployment came as a special forces colonel was shot dead while he tried to blow holes in the perimeter wall surrounding the mosque complex. The Government says that 24 people have been killed in the stand-off but a spokesman for the radical cleric, who is besieged inside the mosque with hundreds of women and children, claimed that 305 people were killed in an overnight bombardment by government troops.

President Musharraf gave the militants an ultimatum to “surrender or die” late on Saturday. They claim that the rebel cleric, Abdul Rashid Ghazi, is supported by 60 well-armed militants in the mosque.

In a statement carried in Pakistani newspapers, Mr Ghazi said he had chosen “martyrdom” over negotiations and hoped that his death would spark an Islamic revolution in Pakistan.

The Government claimed yesterday that among the radicals inside the mosque were members of a proscribed group, Harkat Jihad-e-Islam, which is suspected of killing Daniel Pearl, the Wall Street Journal reporter, and of executing a bomb attack that killed 11 French engineers in 2002.

Thousands of troops have surrounded the mosque and an adjoining seminary for women over the past six days.

Security forces have also seized control of a seminary a few miles away that is also run by clerics from the Red Mosque. The authorities have described the Jamia Faridia madrassa as a “powerhouse” for the mosque and said that several of its students were involved in the stand-off.

Yesterday the Government rushed troops to Malakand and Dir district in the North West Frontier Province, where militant mullahs have established Taleban-style Sharia rule and intensified attacks on security forces.

The move came after Maulana Fazlullah, a firebrand cleric, declared holy war against the Government over the military operation at the Red Mosque. Pakistani security officials say that there are close links between the mosque and militant Islamic groups in northern Pakistan.

On Friday suspected Islamic militants killed an army major and three soldiers in a suicide attack on an army convoy near Sawat. It was the second attack on the security forces in the past week. The area is a stronghold of a banned Islamic militant group known as Tehreek-e-Nafaz-e-Shariate-Mohammadi (Movement for the Enforcement of Islamic Laws).

Reports said that government troops were ready to launch an operation in Sawat on the headquarters of Fazlullah, the group’s leader. The movement, which was banned by General Musharraf in 2002, has emerged as one of the most powerful religious factions in the North West Frontier Province and Fazlullah has developed a large following in Pashtun areas bordering Afghanistan.

Pakistani security officials said that the group presented the most potent threat to national security because of links to al-Qaeda. The group has been involved in several deadly attacks on Pakistani security forces.

Last night unidentified gunmen shot dead three Chinese in Peshawar, the northwestern provincial capital.

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