KARACHI, Pakistan -- Shouting "stop religious
terrorism," hundreds of Christians marched in Karachi Wednesday after two
gunmen invaded the office of a Christian charity, tied up workers and shot
seven of them to death, each with a bullet to the head.
The bloodbath in the southern port city shattered hopes that a sweeping
crackdown on Islamic militants had quelled the violent groups targeting
foreigners and Pakistan's Christian minority.
An eighth person was critically wounded in the attack on the third-floor office
of the Institute for Peace and Justice, a Pakistani Christian charity. The
victims, all Pakistani Christians, were bound to chairs with their hands behind
their backs before being shot, Karachi Police Chief Kamal Shah said.
There was no claim of responsibility and Shah said it was not known who was
behind the attack. Police were questioning an office assistant who was tied up
and beaten but not shot.
It was the latest in a string of attacks on Christian organizations that have
killed at least 36 people and wounded 100 since President Pervez Musharraf's
decision to join the war on terrorism in Afghanistan and crack down on
extremists at home.
It came a day after gunmen in the western province of Gujarat in neighboring
India killed 32 people at a Hindu temple, raising new tensions between the
hostile neighbors.
In Karachi, Pakistani authorities were trying to figure out how the gunmen got
into the office, which had an electronic door that could only be opened from
the inside, he said. The office assistant told police there were two gunmen,
Shah said.
The building in a central business district of Karachi was cordoned off, and a
female relative of one of the victims was led away sobbing by police. The
mother of another victim, 36-year-old Benjamin Talib, collapsed and was taken
to the hospital.
The Institute for Peace and Justice has operated in Karachi for 30 years,
working with poor municipal and textile laborers to improve working conditions
and organize programs with human rights groups.
Pakistan's 3.8 million Christians make up about 2.5 percent of the country's
overwhelmingly Muslim population.
Information Minister Nisar Memon denounced the attackers as "enemies of
Pakistan."
He said the violence would not shake the nation's resolve. "Pakistan's
cooperation with the world community in the war against terrorism will
continue," he said.
Many Pakistani Christians complained the government was failing to protect them
and some took their outrage out on city officials.
"Shame! Shame! Shame!" a crowd of people shouted at Karachi Mayor
Naimatullah Khan when he arrived at the hospital where the bodies were taken.
Later, 400 demonstrators, most of them Christian, marched on the Governor's
House, shouting "stop religious terrorism" and demanding protection.
"People in our community now feel more insecure ... our people are being
killed," said Bishop Victor Mall, head of the Diocese Church of Pakistan
in Multan, an area in Punjab province that has spawned a number of militant
Muslim groups.
Shehbaz Bhatti, a Christian who heads the All Pakistan Minorities Alliance,
blamed Islamic militants sympathetic to Osama bin Laden's al-Qaida network and
the hard-line Taliban regime ousted from neighboring Afghanistan.
He said Christians felt increasingly insecure in Pakistan. "Our anger is
now reaching the boiling point," he said.
Mayor Khan appealed to all Muslims in Pakistan to work with Christians to
promote peace.
"Those trying to disturb the peace in Karachi are bent upon exploiting
religious sentiments," he said.
In October last year six masked gunmen opened fire on congregants at a
Protestant church service in the Punjab city of Behawalpur, killing 15 Christians
and a Muslim guard.
On March 17, a grenade attack on a Protestant church in Islamabad's heavily
guarded diplomatic quarter killed five people, including an American woman, her
17-year-old daughter and the lone assailant.
On Aug. 9, attackers hurled grenades at worshippers as they were leaving a
church on the grounds of a Presbyterian hospital in Taxila, 25 miles west of
the capital, Islamabad. Four nurses were killed and 25 people were wounded.
Four days earlier, assailants raided a Christian school 40 miles east of
Islamabad, killing six Pakistanis.
But optimism had been growing that authorities were getting the upper hand.
This month, police in Karachi arrested 23 members of Harakat ul-Mujahedeen
Al-Almi, a militant group suspected in the June bombing outside the U.S.
Consulate as well as the suicide car bomb in May that killed 11 French
engineers and abortive plots against a McDonald's and a KFC restaurant.
Police found maps of two churches and a Christian school in Karachi, along with
weapons and explosives. That discovery prompted authorities to remove signs
from outside some churches set up in private homes and to fortify other
Christian sites with sandbag bunkers.