Islamabad Police Chief Is Dismissed

Islamabad’s police chief and four other senior police officials were fired Tuesday after a deadly grenade attack on a Protestant church attended by foreigners.

The shake-up came as police said they would send DNA samples from the body of a man they suspect carried out the attack to the United States. The attack Sunday killed five people, including two Americans.

Forty-five other people, most of them foreigners, were hurt when an attacker hurled grenades into the church near the U.S. Embassy during a morning service.

The attack on the Protestant International Church has prompted the State Department to warn Americans against traveling to Pakistan. In Washington, State Department spokesman Richard Boucher said the United States was sending a team of agents from the department’s Bureau of Diplomatic Security to help with the investigation.

Pakistan’s president, Gen. Pervez Musharraf, ordered “immediate and effective steps” to improve law and order after meeting with top security officials and regional officials Tuesday to review the case. The people want “quick justice,” he said.

No group has claimed responsibility for the attack, but investigators are focusing on Islamic extremists outraged by Musharraf’s support for the U.S. in its war on terrorism.