Pakistan police arrest al-Qaida-linked militant

Dozens of police commandos raided a home in a remote town in eastern Pakistan and arrested an al-Qaida-linked militant accused of killing minority Shiite Muslims, police and officials said today.

The suspect, Qari Ahsan Shah, was nabbed from the Rahim Yar Khan, a town in the Punjab province this week, said Malik Munir, a police spokesman.

He would not give further details, but two other officials said the man was a Pakistani and held a prominent position in Lashkar-e-Jhangvi, an al-Qaida-linked Sunni militant group which has been blamed for killing scores of minority Shiites.

The group was banned by the country’s President General Pervez Musharraf in 2001.

Pakistan has a history of sectarian violence, mostly blamed on rival majority Sunni and minority Shiite extremist groups.

Although most of Pakistan’s Sunni and Shiite Muslims live peacefully together, small radical groups on both sides often target each other’s leaders and activists.

About 97% of Pakistan’s 150 million people are Muslim, and Sunnis outnumber Shiites by a ratio of about four-to-one.

The schism between Sunnis and Shiites dates back to the seventh century and involves a dispute over who was the true heir to the prophet Muhammad.