US President George W. Bush vowed to help find the people behind a grenade attack on a Pakistan church that killed five people, including a US diplomat's wife and daughter, and wounded more than 40.
There was no claim of responsibility for Sunday's attack in the capital, Islamabad, but suspicion fell on hardline Islamic groups opposed to Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf's support for the US-led war on terror after the September 11 attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.
"I am outraged by the terrorist attack that took place today in Islamabad, Pakistan, against innocent civilians. I strongly condemn them as acts of murder that cannot be tolerated by any person of conscience nor justified by any cause," Bush said in a statement released by the White House on Sunday.
"We will work closely with the government of Pakistan to ensure those responsible for this terrorist attack face justice."
The killings follow the kidnapping and execution of another US citizen in Pakistan, Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl, who was abducted on January 23.
Forty-two people from various nations were wounded in the church attack and the death toll could rise. Officials said six or seven people suffered serious injuries.
"I saw a fellow throwing some grenades," said an elderly German woman wearing a white scarf flecked with blood who gave her name as Jutta. "I got down. Praise God I was spared but others were seriously injured. It was havoc."
The 60 to 70 people at the Protestant International Church, a popular place of worship for foreigners in Islamabad, had sung some hymns and were listening to the sermon.
The calm was shattered by a blast at the back of the church and one man rushed up the aisle brandishing grenades and shouting, witnesses said.
Worshippers dived for cover as five or six explosions ripped through the church, filling it with smoke and splattering the walls and ceiling with blood.
Attack Condemned
Musharraf -- who has banned seven militant groups and ordered the detention of hundreds of activists since September 11 -- called the attack a "ghastly act of terrorism", according to the state news agency.
A government statement said a lone attacker killed the five churchgoers -- two Americans, one Pakistani, one Afghan and an unidentified person whose body was torn to pieces.
"Apparently it is of a foreigner and male," said a doctor at the Pakistan Institute of Medical Sciences.
US diplomat Milton Green's wife, Barbara, and teenage daughter, Kristen, were killed, the US ambassador to Pakistan said. Green and his son were injured.
Ambassador Wendy Chamberlin called the American victims "two friends I admired, respected and I loved".
Police said they were not yet sure whether the attacker had escaped or was among the dead or injured.
Pakistani authorities said the wounded included 12 Pakistanis, 10 Americans, five Iranians, two Sri Lankans, one Iraqi, one Ethiopian and a German. Citizens of Britain, Canada, Australia, Switzerland and Afghanistan were also hurt.
Pakistan Law Minister Khalid Ranjha said the attack was "certainly a message" and may have been carried out "to spoil our relations with our foreign friends".
But the head of Pakistan's main Islamic party said it could not have been the work of a religious group.
"We condemn this act in the strongest words and assure the Christian minority that we fully share their grief and tragedy and will support any action against people who did this," Jamaat-e-Islami leader Qazi Hussain Ahmed said.
Sunday's attack follows the killing of 15 worshippers and a police guard at St Dominic's church in the city of Bahawalpur in October, the worst assault on Pakistan's small Christian minority since independence from Britain in 1947.
Largely Muslim Pakistan has suffered a surge in violence between Sunni and Shi'ite militants but attacks on Christians and other minorities -- who make up about three percent of the 140 million population -- are relatively rare.
(China Daily March 18, 2002)
