Pakistani city of Karachi and tied up and shot dead at least six Christians Wednesday, September 25, police said.
One of the wounded later died in an area hospital raising the total death toll to seven. The attack occurred at the third-floor offices of the Institute for Peace and Justice, or Idara-e-Amn-o-Insaf, a Pakistani Christian charity that works in the city, news reports said.
It had been operating for 30 years, working with Karachi’s poor municipal and textile workers to press for basic worker rights, and organizing programs with local human rights groups.
COVERED BODIES
Television footage showed how covered bodies were carried out of the building, as investigations revealed that all victims were shot in the head at close range.
Karachi Police Chief Kamal Shah told reporters that "victims were tied up in chairs with their hands behind their backs and their mouths taped before being shot point-blank in the head."
Shah said police found eight empty shell casings, one for each of those shot, the Associated Press (AP) news agency reported. He added that five of the dead were found seated in a main room at the office, and the sixth was tied to a chair in the bathroom.
BEATEN BY ATTACKERS
Police reportedly questioned an office assistant who was tied up and beaten by the attackers, but apparently not shot. By late morning, hundreds of police had cordoned off the 13-story building in a central business district of Karachi, reported journalists.
A female relative of one of the victims arrived at the office and was seen sobbing and beating herself in anguish before being led away by police, AP said.
There was no immediate word on a possible motive for the attack, although analysts linked the violence to a sweeping crack-down on extremists groups that have targeted Christian and Western interests in the country.
EXTREMISTS ANGERED
Muslim extremists have been angered by the Pakistani government’s support for the United States led war against terrorism in Afghanistan.
Pakistan has arrested more than two dozen members of extremist groups in connection with the attacks, but at the weekend, Interior Minister Moinuddin Haider told Reuters news agency he suspected the intelligence services of neighboring India might have financed them.
Wednesday’s attack came a day after two gunmen attacked a Hindu temple in Gujarat, western India and killed at least 29 people. The latest violence against a Christian target in Pakistan was expected to lead to more concerns among among missionary workers and Western diplomats.
MORE KILLINGS
Last month on August 9, four Pakistani nurses and an attacker were killed in an attack on a Christian hospital in the town of Taxila. Four days earlier six people were shot dead by gunmen who burst into a school for the children of foreign missionaries in the resort town of Muree.
In March, a grenade attack on the Protestant International Church in Islamabad killed five people, including the wife and daughter of an American diplomat.
Business people have suffered as well. On May 8, a suicide bombing killed 11 French naval engineers and three Pakistanis in Karachi. A car bomb outside the U.S. consulate on June 14 killed 12 Pakistanis.
PAKISTAN’S ENEMIES
Pakistani Information Minister Nisar Memon told AP that he condemned the attack on Wednesday September 25, saying those who carried it out were "enemies of Pakistan."
"We are particularly sad about the killings in Karachi because the terrorist have targeted unarmed Christian civilians," Memon said, adding that "cowardly terrorist attacks" would not deter Pakistan’s resolve.
The attacks have prompted authorities nationwide to remove signs from around some churches set up in private homes and to fortify other Christian sites with sandbag bunkers, AP reported.
