Pakistan Church Attack Kills Three
Unidentified assailants tossed at least one grenade at a Christian church in Daska, a town about 40 miles northwest of Lahore, on Christmas Day, killing three people and injuring at least seven others, police said.
The attack against the Protestant church was under investigation, according to a written statement from the Punjab provincial police in Lahore, the capital of Pakistan's eastern Punjab province.
No one has so far taken responsibility, but security in this mostly Muslim state had been stepped up ahead of Christmas celebrations.
The attack came the same day that police announced they had found explosives and ammunition near a heavily guarded church in Pakistan's capital of Islamabad. Church officials feared they had been the intended target of an attack, but went ahead with yuletide services.
Pakistani security officials said they found a shopping bag in bushes containing two handmade grenades and 20 shell casings about 100 yards from the St. Thomas's Protestant Church.
"I don't know what the motive was of the people who left these two hand grenades and some other ammunition," a senior Interior Ministry official, Brig. Javed Cheema, told The Associated Press.
The church's pastor, Rev. Irshad John said Christmas Day services would be held as planned despite his belief that St. Thomas's had been targeted for attack.
"It's God's promise that he will be with us," he said. "It was God who changed the plans of those people."
More than half-dozen policemen cradling rifles have stood outside the church in the days leading up to Christmas.
Since Pakistan lent its support to the U.S.-led military campaign to overthrow Afghanistan's hard-line Taliban, attacks on Christians by suspected Islamic militants have killed about 30 people and injured at least 100. The United States is widely identified as a Christian country.
"So who bears the brunt of Muslim anger and retaliation? We Christians do," said Shabaz Bhatti, a leader in Pakistan's Christian community. "We're the ones who paid the price of America's attacks on Afghanistan."
There have been four deadly attacks on Christians in Pakistan this year. The last was on Sept. 25, when gunmen entered the offices of a Christian welfare organization in Karachi, tied seven employees to their chairs and shot each in the head, execution style.
On March 17, a grenade attack on Protestant church in Islamabad killed five people, including a U.S. Embassy employee and her 17-year-old daughter.
On Aug. 5, assailants raided a Christian school filled with foreign children in Murree, 40 miles east of Islamabad. Six Pakistanis were killed, including guards and non-teaching staff.
And on Aug. 9, attackers hurled grenades at worshippers at a church on the grounds of a Presbyterian hospital in Taxila, about 25 miles west of Islamabad, killing four people.
Radical Islamic groups have been blamed for the attacks aimed at attacking President Pervez Musharraf for his support of the global coalition's war on terror in neighboring Afghanistan.