Pakistani authorities have arrested more than five people over an attack on a Christian hospital chapel in which four medical staff and one attacker died, a local official said.
"A few people have been arrested and they are being questioned, investigations are going on. I don't know the exact number of people but it is more than five," Tariq Khiani, the mayor of Rawalpindi district, told AFP on Monday.
Rawalpindi covers the town of Taxila, 25 kilometers (15.5 miles) west of the capital Islamabad, where three men hurled grenades at worshippers as they emerged from a morning prayer service in the chapel of Taxila's Christian Hospital on Friday.
Three female medical staff -- two nurses and a paramedic -- and one of the assailants, died in the attack. Another female nurse died at the weekend from injuries.
Police were quoted in the Dawn newspaper as saying seven people, including the father of the dead attacker, were being held.
The dead attacker was identified as a member of a "banned religious faction" by Rawalpindi police chief Marwat Shah at the weekend.
Seven Islamic militant groups have been outlawed by the government in the past 12 months, including extremist organisations of the Sunni and Shiite Muslim sects and Kashmiri militant outfits.
Friday's attack has been linked to a deadly raid on the Muree Christian School northeast of Islamabad on August 5 in which six people were killed.
Local media reported that security officials had identified factions of the banned Harkat-ul Mujahedin and Jaish-i-Mohammad a being behind a chain of attacks on Western and Christian targets in Pakistan.
Military spokesman Major General Rashid Qureshi told AFP Sunday that last week's attacks signalled a new strategy by Islamic militants angry at President Pervez Musharraf's support of US-led operations to quash the Taliban and the al-Qaeda terror network.
"These were 'soft' targets, whereas before the focus ... was on high profile targets such as the US consulate and the French naval engineers in Karachi," he said, referring to two suicide car-bombings in the southern Pakistan city earlier this year which claimed 23 lives.
Qureshi added that security forces were close to arresting the two assailants who escaped after the Taxila incident.
Since Musharraf threw Pakistan's support behind the US-led terror crackdown in the wake of the September 11 terror attacks, there have been eight strikes on Christian and Western targets, claiming 59 lives.