Church Attack May Have Targeted Americans

Pakistani authorities Monday were investigating possible links between an attack on a Christian church here the day before and a deadly assault in October on another Christian congregation in nearby Punjab province.

In both cases, the suspected targets of the attacks were Americans. The group under investigation is a banned Sunni Muslim militant organization with strong links to the former Taliban regime in Afghanistan.

Also under investigation is the possibility that the Islamabad attack--which killed five people, including two Americans--was a suicide mission. That could mark a worrisome expansion of the deadliest, and most difficult to stop, form or terrorism.

Four of those killed in Sunday’s attack at the Protestant International Church in this capital’s diplomatic quarter have been identified, including a U.S. Embassy employee and her 17-year-old daughter. But the fifth was injured beyond recognition.

As no family members have come forward to identify those remains, police have speculated that the final victim may have been the same man who hurled at least three grenades into the congregation during Sunday services. A Western official connected with the investigation identified the fifth victim as “one of the perpetrators,” suggesting that more than one attacker might have been involved.

“He was blown to pieces,” the official said. The force of the explosions inside the church blew out windows and spattered blood on the 30-foot ceiling.

According to Pakistani Communications Minister Javed Ashraf Qazi, a former military intelligence chief, at the top of the list of terrorist organizations suspected in the Sunday attack is the Sunni militant organization Lashkar-e-Jhangvi.

Banned in August by President Pervez Musharraf because of a series of violent attacks on the country’s minority Shiite Muslim community, the heavily armed Lashkar-e-Jhangvi has been linked by witnesses to the Oct. 28 attack at a Christian service in Bahawalpur, in Punjab province.

In that incident, attackers sprayed the congregation with fire from Kalashnikov assault rifles, killing 15 worshipers and a policeman before escaping on motorcycles. Although all of the victims in the Bahawalpur attack were Pakistani Christians, authorities believe the primary targets were two American missionaries who had been expected to attend the service.

Four members of Lashkar-e-Jhangvi were killed in police shootouts earlier this month, including Shakeel Anwar, whom witnesses in Bahawalpur identified as the chief suspect in the October church shootings. Police said they recovered three Kalashnikov rifles, two grenades and three pistols from the dead militants.

Visiting some of the wounded victims of the Sunday attack in Islamabad, Pakistani Interior Minister Moinuddin Haider suggested that the attack might have been related to the earlier police actions, with the remaining members of the group acting in retaliation.

Lashkar-e-Jhangvi is closely connected to another group, Sipah-e-Sahaba Pakistan, that has been identified by the U.S. government as a terrorist organization. Both groups are known to have members trained in terrorist camps in Afghanistan.

In the wake of the Sunday attack, which took place in a heavily guarded diplomatic enclave only a quarter of a mile from the U.S. Embassy, many Western embassies were reviewing their policies regarding dependents of diplomats. After Sept. 11 and the U.S. bombing missions in Afghanistan, many embassies, including the United States’, ordered their dependents and nonessential personnel home.

But in recent months, most of the dependents had returned to Islamabad, and tensions seemed to be lessening. For example, police inspection of handbags and other items at the Protestant International Church had been curtailed after parishioners complained.

The International School, attended by 17-year-old American high school senior Kristen Wormsley, planned a memorial service today. Wormsley and her mother, U.S. Embassy personnel officer Barbara Green, were killed in Sunday’s attack.

Islamabad police increased security Monday across the city. Musharraf, who earlier this year announced a crackdown on militant groups, met all day Monday with officials involved in investigating the incident, viewed here as a major embarrassment to the military government.

On Monday afternoon, Foreign Ministry spokesman Aziz Ahmed Khan announced that a special task force had been created to investigate the attack on the congregation of 70. Aziz described the attack as an act “against the spirit of Islam and against any norm of civilized behavior.”

Also of concern is the possibility that Sunday’s bloodshed was caused by a suicide attacker. Although Pakistan has experienced many acts of terrorism, primarily sectarian violence between Sunni and Shiite Muslims in Punjab and ethnic clashes in the port city of Karachi, there have been no recent examples of the type of suicide missions that have plagued the Middle East during the Palestinian-Israeli conflict and Sri Lanka in the civil war between Tamils and the majority Sinhalese.

According to Rohan Gunaratna, senior research associate at the Center for the Study of Terrorism and Political Violence at the University of St. Andrews in Scotland, a trend for suicide attacks has accelerated since Sept. 11.

Before then, most such attacks had been restricted to the Middle East or Asia, primarily Sri Lanka. Gunaratna, a specialist on suicide bombings, said there have been “about 250 suicide attacks in the past 20 years by Asian and Middle Eastern groups.”

“But increasingly,” he said in a recent interview, “more and more groups are becoming interested in the suicide tactic because it is very effective.”

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Times staff writer Craig Pyes contributed to this report.