Diyarbakir, Turkey - Attackers slit the throats of three people, including a German, at a Turkish Bible publisher's on Wednesday, officials said, the latest attack on minorities in mainly Muslim Turkey.
The victims were found with their hands and feet bound, said Halil Ibrahim Dasoz, governor of the southeastern province of Malatya where the attack occurred.
Four people were detained in connection with the attack and one person, who fell from the building and was considered a suspect, was taken to hospital with head trauma, he said.
German Ambassador Eckart Cuntz said a German was among the dead.
The killings come as political tensions rise between the powerful secular elite, including army generals and judges, and the religious-minded AK Party government over next month's presidential elections.
Television pictures showed police wrestling one man to the ground and leading several men -- apparently in their teens -- out of the building.
A wave of nationalism has swept the secular but predominantly Sunni Muslim country over the past year.
This year Armenian-Turkish editor Hrant Dink was shot dead by an ultranationalist youth. Dink was also from Malatya.
A historic visit to Turkey by Pope Benedict last year was prefaced by protests in Istanbul and followed a rise in violence against Christian clergy.
THREATS
For many Turkish nationalists, Christian missionaries are seen as enemies of Turkey working to undermine its political and religious institutions.
The government and other officials in Turkey have criticised Christian missionary work while the European Union, which Turkey hopes to join, has called for more freedom for the tiny Christian minority.
"We would like a government campaign to get rid of the myths, such as that missionaries are trying to divide the country, these are the things which feed such acts," said Carlos Madrigal, an evangelical pastor who knew the victims and said they were also evangelical protestants.
"In some ways the situation has improved because we have got legal rights ... but there are parts of society which have become radicalised," Madrigal, whose Istanbul church has police protection since the Dink murder, told Reuters.
An official from the publishing house told local television that they had received threats over its publications.
"It's too early to say but the attack appears to be the work of Islamists," said Gareth Jenkins, an Istanbul-based expert on Turkish security matters.
"There are generally a lot of threats against Christians in Turkey, primarily against Turkish converts."
He said one of the last serious attack against Turkish Christians was in 1997 when the then-active Islamist Vasat movement bombed a bible book stand in the southeast, killing one child and injuring dozens.
Early last year an Italian priest was shot dead -- also by a youth -- in the Black Sea port of Trabzon which coincided with worldwide protests over cartoons of the Prophet Mohammad. (Additional reporting by Daren Butler, Mustafa Yukselbaba, Paul de Bendern, Emma Ross-Thomas)