ISLAMABAD: Militants from groups linked to Al-Qaeda and the Taleban are suspected of being behind the mob violence that killed eight Christians in central Pakistan over the weekend, a senior government official said on Tuesday.
The army is battling a Taleban insurgency in the northwest, and there are fears that militants based in the central province of Punjab, where the attack on Christians took place, could become more active in trying to destabilise mostly-Muslim Pakistan. Sipah-e-Sahaba Pakistan (SSP), an outlawed pro-Taleban Sunni Muslim sectarian group, and its Al-Qaeda-linked offshoot, Lashkar-e-Jhangvi (LeJ), were suspected of orchestrating the attack in Gojra town, according to Rana Sanaullah, Punjab’s law minister.
“Absolutely, these banned groups are involved in the rioting,” Sanaullah, who is also responsible for the security matters of the province, told Reuters by telephone from Gojra.
