Attack on school sends shockwaves

A team of shocked Christian representatives, social activists and lawyers left Lahore yesterday for the hill resort of Murree in the northern Punjab to visit the school where an attack by gunmen left six people dead.

At least five of the six victims are Christians, and the sizeable Christian community in the Murree area is said to be in a "deep state of mourning". The school was a prestigious institution run by missionaries, and largely catering to the children of foreigners based in the country.

Local police fear that "Western children attending this school could have been the main targets."

Last year too, in October, 18 Christians were gunned down in Bahawalpur in an attack motivated by similar reasoning. This also indicates that the security threat faced by Christians in the country has expanded.

The Christian community has in the past not been a target for militant action and is known for being generally peaceful and in many ways better integrated into mainstream life than other minorities.

"We had said earlier that Christians remained under threat that more attacks would be made on them. Despite this we have remained unprotected," said Joseph Francis, a prominent Lahore-based Christian activist and head of the CLASS organisation, which works to protect the rights of citizens, and especially Christians.

Francis said he was "taking a group of activists to Murree," and warned that "other schools could face a threat." Many schools and hospitals across the country are run by various Christian groups and by tradition have catered to many of the educational needs of the elite.

The Punjab police also concede that the attack in Murree presents an added challenge to them.

"The fact that not only Westerners but also local Christians continue to be the targets of these killers makes it more difficult to protect them all," said Javed Noor, Deputy Inspector General (DIG) of Police in Punjab.

He said the latest outrage showed "the battle we are waging against militancy is not an easy one, but eventually we will crush these militants totally."

It is also believed, at the initial stages of the investigation, that activists of the Jaish-e-Mohammed (JEM) headed by jailed Maulana Masood Azhar may have been behind the attack.

JEM had recently warned the police to "be on the alert" after the detention of Azhar was extended.

JEM is also known to have been recruiting young men in the Murree area, where unemployment is a pressing problem, and it is thought that at least some of the four young men involved in the killing may have been locals.

However, the fact that it was the Lashkar-e-Jhangvi (LEJ) that was found to have been behind the October 2001 church attack in Bahawalpur, that claimed 18 lives, has also led to some police officials being convinced that this is "another attack by the same group."

Police investigators looking into recent incidents of militancy have already reached the conclusion that local groups have aligned themselves alongside the Al Qaida, formed new organisations such as the Lashkar-e-Omar, and are involved in such terrorist actions.

The latest such incident also shows that despite recent mass arrests, militants are still capable of striking.

The choice of a school attended by members of the Western community, including diplomats, also suggests that as in past acts of terrorism, one of the purposes was also to embarrass the military regime.

The Human Rights Commission of Pakistan (HRCP) and other groups condemned the attack.