Four die in attack on Christian hospital

Three nurses and an attacker died today when grenades were hurled at people leaving a church at a Christian hospital near Islamabad.

It was the second attack to be mounted Christian or Western interests in Pakistan in less than a week.

The assailants struck at about 7.45am local time (0245 BST) in the grounds of the Christian hospital in Taxila, about 25 miles northwest of Islamabad, said the town’s police inspector, Fatha Khan.

Khan did not identify the attackers.

Hospital officials said three nurses, all Pakistani, died in the attack, and 15 others were injured.

The assault was the second in less than a week against Christian or Western interests. On Monday, gunmen burst through the gates of the Murree Christian School about 35 miles northeast of Islamabad, killing six people, all Pakistani.

Police said that three men responsible for the Murree school attack blew themselves up with grenades on Tuesday after escaping from a police checkpoint in Pakistan-controlled Kashmir.

Pakistan Information Minister Nisar Memon said on Wednesday that the Government also believed that the men who died in the grenade explosion were responsible for the school assault.

The school was closed until at least Monday while board members discuss its future.

Before blowing themselves up, the three men admitted having attacked the school and warned that several other groups like them "plan to carry out similar attacks on Americans and you will soon hear about it."

According to witnesses who spoke to regional police commander Moravet Shah, the men had also said: "We have no enmity with Muslims. Our targets are only Americans and non-believers."

The men said they were from Karachi, a southern city that has been the scene of numerous recent attacks against Westerners and Western interests.

Wall Street Journal correspondent Daniel Pearl was kidnapped there in January and later murdered.

On May 8, a bomb exploded in front of a Karachi hotel, killing 11 French engineers and three Pakistanis. Another explosion killed 12 Pakistanis outside the city’s US Consulate on June 14.

On March 17, an attacker hurled grenades into a Protestant church in Islamabad’s heavily guarded diplomatic quarter, killing five people, including an American woman and her 17-year-old daughter. The assailant also died.

The Taxila hospital, which receives funds from the Presbyterian Church, and American and other Christian groups, was founded in 1922 and specialises in treating eye diseases common among poor Pakistanis.

Taxila is the site of ancient Buddhist ruins dating from the 3rd Century BC.