Four suspected militants, including two linked to a bloody attack on a church last year, were killed in a shootout with the police in eastern Pakistan early on Sunday, police said. They said the two men suspected in the church attack were being transported in a police convoy when it was attacked by unidentified men near the small town of Krore Pukka, some 60 miles southeast of the city of Multan.

The gunmen succeeded in freeing the two suspects but were then pursued by police, a police spokesman in Krore Pukka said.

"Police chased the accused and after an encounter killed four people, including two suspected terrorists," he said. "One of the attackers fled."

The officer said the two suspects, both members of the banned Sunni Muslim militant organization Lashkar-e-Jhangvi, were being taken to recover arms and ammunition they had said were hidden on the outskirts of the city.

The men were held over an attack on October 28 in which masked attackers sprayed automatic gunfire at the congregation of St. Dominic's church in the city of Bahawalpur.

Seventeen people died in the worst massacre of Christians in Pakistan's history, which came just after President Pervez Musharraf threw his weight behind the U.S. war against terror in neighboring Afghanistan.

Musharraf's policy shift following the September 11 attacks on the United States enraged Muslim extremist groups and prompted a spate of attacks on Christian and foreign targets.

Police had previously identified the two men as Mohammad Waseem, a civil engineer expert in handling explosives, and Mohammad Akram, alias Sheeraz, a college dropout.

They said Waseem was also involved in the August 9 attack on a missionary hospital in Taxila, near Islamabad, in which four Pakistani nurses and an attacker were killed.

Last month police arrested four more men from Vehari in connection with the St. Dominic's church attack, all of whom belonged to Lashkar-e-Jhangvi.

They said three more suspects were on the run, and another was killed in an encounter with police in March.

Police said the suspects had admitted killing dozens of people in the past few years, including the former Minister of State for Foreign Affairs Siddiq Kanju, a former member of the Punjab provincial assembly Malik Ghazanfar and director of state-run Pakistan Television, Aaun Mohammad Rizvi.

In July, six people, four of whom were suspected of involvement in the church attack, were killed and nine policemen injured when a police convoy carrying them came under fire.

Lashkar-e-Jhangvi, which is also blamed for a series of sectarian attacks on rival Shi'ite Muslims, was banned last year in Musharraf's crackdown on religious extremism.

PHOTO CAPTION

A Pakistani soldier frisks a Christian entering St. Anthony II church in Lahore August 11, 2002. Security was tightened around churches throughout the country as said Sunday that the three men behind Friday's grenade attack on a hospital chapel were believed to belong one of two banned Islamic militant groups. Photo by Str/Pakistan/Reuters
- Aug 11 11:38