PESHAWAR: A twin suicide bombing killed more than 75 people at a church service in northwest Pakistan on Sunday, officials said, in what is believed to be the country’s deadliest attack on Christians. The two attackers struck at the end of a service at All Saints Church in Peshawar, the main town in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province which has borne the brunt of a bloody Islamist insurgency in recent years. Sahibzada Anees, one of Peshawar’s most senior officials, told reporters the bombers struck when the service had just ended. “Most of the wounded are in critical condition,” Anees said. “We are in an area which is a target of terrorism and within that area there was a special security arrangement for the church. We are in a rescue phase and once it is over we will investigate what went wrong.” Former minister for inter-faith harmony Paul Bhatti and provincial lawmaker Fredrich Azeem Ghauri both said the attack was the deadliest ever targeting Christians in Pakistan. The K-P government announced Rs500,000 in compensation to the families of victims in the attack. The small and largely impoverished Christian community suffers discrimination in overwhelmingly Muslim-majority Pakistan but bombings against them are extremely rare. Schoolteacher Nazir Khan, 50, said the service had just ended and at least 400 worshippers were greeting each other when there was a huge explosion. “A huge blast threw me on the floor and as soon as I regained my senses, a second blast took place and I saw wounded people everywhere,” Khan told AFP. An AFP reporter saw shreds of human flesh and bloodstains on the walls and floor of the church, whose windows had been ripped apart by the blast. Pages of a Bible were scattered near the altar and rice meals mingled with dust on the floor amid shattered benches. Walls were gouged with ball bearings used in the explosives, he said. Grieving relatives blocked the main Grand Trunk Road highway with bodies of the victims to protest against the killings, an AFP reporter said. Christians in Karachi, Lahore, Multan and other cities also staged protest rallies to condemn the killings and demand state protection for their lives and properties, AFP reporters said. In the southern port city of Karachi angry protesters clashed with police when they tried to clear a road in Isa Nagri, a low-income Christian neighbourhood. Pakistan’s Ulema Council, an association of leading Muslim scholar
Posted on: Sun, 22 Sep 2013 16:44:44 +0000
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