A Pakistani court has sentenced three Islamic militants to death and four others to life imprisonment in the fatal shooting of six people at a Christian school in 2002, police said Thursday.
The defendants were arrested weeks after the Aug. 5, 2002, attack at the Murree Christian School in Murree, a resort town about 55 kilometers (35 miles) northeast of the capital, Islamabad.
In the assault, masked gunmen burst through the front gates of the school firing Kalashnikov rifles.
All of the dead were Pakistanis.
A court in Rawalpindi, a city near Islamabad, on Wednesday found Saifur-ur-Rahman, Mohammed Abu Bakar and Ata Ullah guilty of masterminding and executing the attack, police official Mohammed Hussain official.
He said four other defendants were sentenced to life in jail.
Hussain gave no other details and said the defendants plan to appeal.
Several attacks on Christians have occurred since 2001, when President Gen. Pervez Musharraf made this Islamic nation a key ally in the U.S. war on terror.
In October 2001, gunmen stormed St. Dominic's Church in the eastern Punjab province during a service, killing 16 people.
On March 17, 2002, five worshippers, including two Americans, were killed and 45 others wounded when a militant hurled grenades into a church in Islamabad.
Also in August 2002, militants tossed grenades at a church on the grounds of a Presbyterian hospital in Taxila, about 25 miles (40 kilometers) west of Islamabad, killing four nurses and wounding about 25 people.
Gunmen killed a Roman Catholic priest at his home in July 2003 in Ranala Kot, a village about 300 kilometers (180 miles) south of Islamabad.