Christians fear more attacks

Christian leaders in Pakistan have condemned Wednesday's attack on the minority community during Christmas celebrations in the Punjab province, saying that they were increasingly becoming targets in revenge for the US-led anti terrorist campaign in neighbouring Afghanistan.

“This has happened because of Pakistan's support for the American policies in Afghanistan,” Mehbood Sada, director of the Christian Study Center, told IRIN in the capital, Islamabad on Thursday. “If the US attacks Iraq non-Muslims in Islamic countries will also suffer."

Two young women and a girl died immediately after two attackers wearing all enveloping burkha [Islamic dress for women covering from head to toe] threw grenades into a Christmas Mass service at 9:30 pm local time on Wednesday in the Chianwala village, near the town of Daska in the eastern Punjabi district of Sialkot. At least 14 people were seriously injured in the incident at the Presbyterian church.

Sada maintained that Christians were expecting such attacks during the festive season, however, they didn’t expect them in the rural areas. “Regarding this particular incident, we cannot say that the government failed. They just cannot protect every church and chapel across the country,” he said.

The government had stepped up security across the country by deploying commandos and police forces mostly outside churches.

Meanwhile, the Associated Press reported on Thursday the arrest of a local anti-Christian cleric Afzar and his son Abdullah, as well as another two unidentified people, in connection with the attack.

In a statement, Pakistan’s newly elected Prime Minister Zafrullah Jamali, condemned the barbarous act calling it “dastardly” and designed to “foment religious and sectarian strife” in the country.

The attack follows several others this year on the minority group in Pakistan, which is less than five percent of the 140 million overwhelmingly Muslim population. In August, at least four people were killed and 23 wounded in a grenade attack on a missionary hospital in Taxila, some 30 km northwest of Islamabad. That was the second incident against Christians in less than a week. In the first, six Pakistanis were shot dead in a gun attack on a Christian missionary school northeast of Islamabad.

In March, five people including the wife and daughter of an American diplomat died in a grenade attack on a church in the capital and last October, 16 Christians and one Muslim were massacred in a church in Bahawalpur also in the populous Punjab province.