Muslim cleric held in grenade attack probe

A radical Muslim cleric who urged the faithful to attack Christians was being questioned today in connection with a deadly Christmas Day grenade attack on a Christian church in Pakistan that left three young girls dead and 13 others wounded, police said.

Two assailants covered in burqas, a traditional women’s garb, tossed a grenade into the middle of worshippers at a Christmas Day service yesterday in the village of Chianwala, around 40 miles north west of Lahore.

The cleric, who uses only one name, Afzar, was being detained because of his hateful remarks toward Christians made three days earlier in a sermon at a mosque in the district of Daska, where Chianwala is located, police said.

Afzar reportedly told his congregation that “it is the duty of every good Muslim to kill Christians”, according to Nazir Yaqub, a local police officer in Daska.

“Afzar told people, ‘You should attack Christians and not even have food until you have seen their dead bodies’,” Yaqub told The Associated Press in a telephone interview.

An Interior Ministry spokesman, Iftikhar Ahmad, told the AP in Islamabad that all three of the dead were young girls.

Security had been increased at churches ahead of Christmas celebrations around mostly Islamic Pakistan, which has seen a string of Islamic militant attacks targeting Christians this year.

Also yesterday, police said they found explosives and ammunition near a church in Pakistan’s capital, Islamabad. Church officials feared they had been the intended target of an attack.

In Chianwala, about 40 people, mostly women and children and all Pakistanis, were attending a Christmas Day service at the church when the attack occurred yesterday evening.

The two attackers escaped after the attack, said Ahmed, the Interior Ministry spokesman. Four of the injured were in a critical condition, according to Malik Mohammed Iqbal, chief of police in the nearby city of Gujranwala.

Witnesses said the attackers wore burqas, the traditional all-encompassing garment worn by women in some Islamic countries, said Amanat Ali, a police official in Daska.

But it was unclear whether the attackers were women or disguised men. Ali said witnesses reported the attackers were taller than most women.

Male Islamic militants in neighbouring Afghanistan have worn burqas to hide their identities in at least one recent attack there.

Since Pakistan lent its support to the US-led military campaign to overthrow Afghanistan’s hard-line Taliban rulers, attacks on Christians by suspected Islamic militants have killed about 30 people and injured at least 100.

Yesterday, Pakistani security officials said they found a shopping bag in bushes containing two handmade grenades and 20 shell casings about 100 yards from Islamabad’s St Thomas’s Protestant Church.

Church officials said they feared the weapons had been left as part of a planned attack on them.

There have been four deadly attacks on Christians in Pakistan this year. The last was on

September 25, when gunmen entered the offices of a Christian welfare organisation in Karachi, tied seven employees to their chairs and shot each in the head, execution style.