KARACHI, 4 April 2005 — Pakistani police arrested five suspected militants and seized a huge cache of arms and ammunitions here yesterday and averted a major sectarian attack, sources said.

The militants were allegedly involved in the killing of 25 people in sectarian violence in the port city of Karachi.

Raja Omar Khitab, deputy superintendent of police in Karachi, said the men allegedly belonged to little known group called Baqiyatullah. The group was described as a youth wing of the outlawed Shiite group, Tehrik-e-Jafferia Pakistan (TJP).

Another high-ranking police official Dost Ali Baloch confirmed the arrests and identified the militants as Muzaffar Ali, Azhar Hussain, Shujaat Ali, Raza Ali and Mustafa Kirmani were arrested in two raids in the city.

A large quantity of arms and ammunition including 40 hand grenades, five Russian-made bombs, 10 RPG rifles, eight AK-47 rifles and 1,500 rounds of ammunition were discovered, Baloch said.

“They were planning some big sectarian attack somewhere in the country,” Baloch said.

On Friday, gunmen shot dead a Shiite scholar Ghulam Hussain Najafi and wounded two people in the eastern city of Lahore.

Meanwhile, a paramilitary soldier moving supplies to a mountain post in southwestern Pakistan hit a land mine yesterday, triggering an explosion that left him and another soldier seriously wounded, an official said.

The explosion occurred in Kahan, a rugged tribal area about 400 km east of Quetta, the capital of southwestern Balochistan province, said Lt. Col. Rizwan Malik, a spokesman for the Frontier Corps paramilitary force.

One soldier lost a leg and the other a hand in the explosion that occurred while they were walking a mule loaded with rations, Malik said.

No one claimed responsibility but Malik suspected local Marri tribesmen for planting the mine.

Local tribesmen often resent the presence of security forces in their area. The troops are deployed to keep the peace and protect government installations.

Last week, four other soldiers were injured in Kahan when their jeep hit a land mine.

Balochistan has been the scene of small-scale bombings and a spate of rocket attacks targeting gas fields and security forces in recent months.