ISLAMABAD, Pakistan, March 17 -- A man hurling hand grenades burst into a Protestant church in the heavily guarded diplomatic district of the Pakistani capital this morning, killing five people -- including an American who worked for the U.S. Embassy and her teenage daughter -- and wounding more than 40.
President Bush and Pakistan's president, Gen. Pervez Musharraf, condemned the assault, the second against Christians since Pakistan joined the U.S.-led anti-terrorism coalition following the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks on New York and the Pentagon. No one asserted responsibility for today's assault, but Pakistani intelligence sources said they were treating it as an anti-American attack.
Witnesses said a series of blasts blew open the doors of the Protestant International Church at 10:50 a.m., just after the pastor began his sermon. The explosions shattered windows and sent the 60 to 70 worshipers diving for cover. Many witnesses said there was one attacker wearing a belt of grenades, but some said there were two men.
Dozens of police and soldiers rushed to the church, a square, white building between the fortified U.S. Embassy compound and the Chinese Embassy. Blood was splattered on the walls of the church up to its 30-foot ceiling. Glass and debris covered the floor, and outside, single-sheet copies of the day's hymns fluttered in the breeze.
"I was sitting in the first row, and suddenly I heard this bang," said Elizabeth Mundhenk, an English teacher from Germany who has lived in Pakistan for 12 years and sometimes plays piano for the congregation. "I saw one person . . . and I'm 90 percent sure I saw a second person. He had this black thing, a grenade, and he threw it. I hid under the piano."
Mundhenk, speaking from a hospital while waiting for surgeons to remove shrapnel from her leg, said that when she emerged from under the piano, she saw "devastation. It was absolutely terrible. . . . One body was just split in two. Almost everybody was covered in blood."
Georgina Dabassum, a Pakistani with a gaping wound on her face and shrapnel in her side, said she never saw the attackers but heard "some noise, like someone firing something. Then there was smoke, the windows were broken, and people were running around. The doors just opened by themselves from the blast."
"People were lying all around me," she said. "It was too much. The whole church was full of blood."
The State Department identified the dead Americans as Barbara Green and her daughter Kristen Wormsley, 17, a senior at the American School in Islamabad. Green and her husband, Milton Green, worked at the embassy -- she in administration and he in the computer division. Milton Green and the couple's young son were injured in the attack, according to police. The State Department would not disclose their home town.
A Pakistani and an Afghan were also killed, and one body remained unidentified tonight. The Associated Press quoted unidentified officials as saying it might be that of an assailant.
Ten Americans were among the injured, as were 12 members of Pakistan's small Christian minority and the Sri Lankan ambassador and his family. Most suffered injuries to their legs and other lower body parts. An emergency room doctor said some of the injuries were critical.
Sectarian violence has become numbingly commonplace across Pakistan, mostly involving attacks on the country's minority Shiite Muslims. In one of the worst of the recent incidents, 10 people were killed in Rawalpindi, near Islamabad, when two gunmen entered a mosque and fired on worshipers during evening prayers Feb. 26.
Attacks on Christians have been rare, but on Oct. 28, 15 worshipers and a policeman were gunned down at a church in the central city of Bahawalpur, the worst assault on Christians in Pakistan since independence from Britain in 1947.
Much of the violence has been blamed on Islamic extremists angry with Musharraf for his support of the U.S. anti-terrorism campaign and his crackdown on domestic terrorism and extremism. The latter effort began Jan. 12 with the arrest of thousands of suspected militants and the banning of five radical groups.
Today's attack in this usually tranquil capital occurred in the heart of the diplomatic enclave, which is considered one of the most secure areas of the city. Police at roadblocks check cars on the main roads approaching the neighborhood, where security was stepped up after Sept. 11. Relatives of U.S. Embassy personnel were told to leave the country after Sept. 11, because of concerns about possible attacks, and were allowed to begin returning only last month.
The Jan. 23 abduction and subsequent slaying of Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl in the southern port city of Karachi heightened concern about the safety of Americans in Pakistan.
"A message has been given to foreigners and minorities that they are not safe here -- a planned and calculated message," said Aftab Ahmed Sheikh, a former senator and leader of a political party of Muslim migrants from northern India.
Bush said in a statement that he was "outraged by the terrorist attack . . . against innocent civilians. I strongly condemn them as acts of murder that cannot be tolerated by any person of conscience nor justified by any cause."
Musharraf pledged to find those responsible for what he called "a ghastly act of terrorism." Other Pakistani officials hinted that India, Pakistan's rival, might be involved.
"Maybe it's an exercise to spoil our relations with our foreign friends," said Khalid Ranjha, Pakistan's law minister. "One cannot rule out the possibility that they chose the place to embarrass the Pakistani government."
He referred to "forces across the border," meaning India, and said that "I would not take it completely out of consideration" that India might be involved.
Other intelligence sources said the police were treating the incident as an attack on Americans. "If you want to attack churches, there are hundreds in Pakistan totally unprotected," said one source with close contacts to the intelligence community. "Rather than an anti-Christian attack, this is being seen as an anti-American attack."
Investigators said they were looking at a possible link to the indictment in the United States last week of Sheik Omar Saeed, who is in a Karachi jail awaiting trial on charges of organizing the Pearl kidnapping. Investigators speaking on condition of anonymity also recalled the March 1995 killing of two U.S. diplomats following the extradition to the United States of Ramzi Yousef, who was later convicted of the 1993 World Trade Center bombing. The slaying of four Texas-based oil workers in Karachi in 1997 followed the conviction of another Pakistani, Aimal Kansi, for the shooting deaths outside CIA headquarters in Northern Virginia.
A State Department spokesman in Washington said: "As the Danny Pearl murder demonstrated, there are a number of extremist groups operating in Pakistan who have anti-American ideology and the means to act against U.S. interests. . . . Extremist groups in Pakistan have repeatedly demonstrated a willingness to commit horrific crimes against their government, innocent civilians and foreigners."
Many of the stunned and wounded churchgoers said they had no intention of leaving Pakistan or of being frightened away by attacks such as today's. "There are anti-Christian attitudes all over the world," said Mundhenk, the English teacher from Germany. "We are not surprised."