ISLAMABAD, 26 December 2002 — Three worshipers were killed and at least 15 people injured late yesterday in an attack on a Presbyterian church in Pakistan’s central Punjab province. "Three people have been killed and 10 others were injured when unidentified men threw explosives into a UP church in a village," police officer Mohammad Ashraf told AFP from the nearby Punjab town of Daska, speaking by telephone.
The attack took place at 8:30 p.m. (1530 GMT) in the United Presbyterian church of Chuyyanwali village, some 200 km (124 miles) southeast of the capital Islamabad.
Two men wearing burqas threw hand grenades into the main chapel in the midst of a crowded evening Christmas service, an Interior Ministry official in Islamabad said.
A doctor at a hospital in neighboring Gujranwala district said he had received a number of the casualties. "We have received one dead and 15 injured. Two of them are in serious condition and they have been referred to a hospital in (the Punjab capital) Lahore," Iftikhar Hussain said. "The rest have minor blast injuries. All the victims are Christians," he added.
Police said the dead were all young women.
The attack came the same day that police announced they had found explosives and ammunition near a heavily guarded church in Pakistan’s capital. 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 meters 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. 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 US-led military campaign to overthrow Afghanistan’s hard-line Taleban, attacks on Christians by militants have killed about 30 people and injured at least 100. The United States is widely identified as a Christian country.
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 a Protestant church in Islamabad killed five people, including a US Embassy employee and her 17-year-old daughter. (Agencies)
