Pakistan school raid suspects "blow themselves up"

07/08/2002| IslamWeb

Three men suspected of attacking a church school in Pakistan earlier this week, killing six people, blew themselves up on Tuesday after being challenged by police, an official said. Tahir Quyoom, deputy inspector general for police in the northern city of Muzaffarabad, told Reuters the body of one of the men, who had killed themselves besides a river, had been recovered.

The river was being searched for the other two.

"It is most likely that they are the attackers on the church school," said Quyoom.

Monday's attack on the Christian Murree School was seen as being aimed at the foreign community as pupils were children of missionaries.

Witnesses said three masked men entered the compound and fired indiscriminately, killing six Pakistanis, including two security guards. None of the children was injured.

The attack sent shockwaves through the foreign community.

Quyoom said local police had been placed on high alert after the three attackers, all young men, escaped.

When police at a road checkpoint in the village of Khabadar saw three men walking towards them on Tuesday, they became suspicious and searched them.

They discovered a hand grenade on one of the men, Quyoom said, but his companions threatened to blow themselves and the policemen up unless they were freed.

The three were allowed to go and headed to the bank of a river nearby and blew themselves up, according to Quyoom.
Khabadar is close to Jhika Gali, the town where the church attack took place.

Quyoom said photographs of the body would be circulated to police to try to identify him and establish if he was one of the three school attackers.

Western and Christian targets have been hit in a series of strikes, some of them blamed on radical Islamic groups angered by President Pervez Musharraf's support of the U.S.-led military campaign against the Taliban and al Qaeda in Afghanistan.

PHOTO CAPTION

Pakistan's Punjab Governor Khalid Maqbool (C), Director of the Church school Russel Morton (L) and District Administrator Tariq Kaini (2nd R) visit the Christian Church School in Jhika Gali, near the hill resort town of Murree August 6, 2002. Unidentified gunmen stormed the school on Monday killing six Pakistani employees. School officials and diplomats said on Tuesday that the attack appears to have been aimed at Westerners rather than Christians. REUTERS/Mian Khursheed