March 28, 2002	Thursday	Muharram 13, 1423

Please Visit our Sponsor (Ads open in separate window)

ISLAMABAD, March 27: Pakistan’s government said on Wednesday one of the five people killed in a grenade attack on a church in Islamabad was probably the assailant himself.

Earlier, police released a sketch of a clean shaven young man with curly hair they suspect of carrying out the March 17 attack which left five people dead, including the wife and daughter of an American diplomat.

Interior Minister Moinuddin Haider told Reuters in an interview he believed “very strongly” the attacker had blown himself up, possibly in a suicide attack.

The fifth body found was badly mutilated and has not been identified. No one has claimed it.

“A grenade has only one ounce of explosive and small splinters which pierce your body, but in this case the whole body disintegrated,” he said.

“He had on his body explosives as well as grenades,” Haider said. “We are not sure whether he was a suicide bomber or whether somebody had trapped him, without his knowing it.”

No one has claimed responsibility for the attack, but suspicion is directed at hardline Islamic groups opposed to Pakistan’s support for the US-led war on terror and its clampdown on Muslim militants.

“I cannot say which group was involved in this, I cannot clearly say about the motive ... (but) after a lot of discussion, we know that they didn’t want to kill Christians because there are many churches around Islamabad and elsewhere, and they came to this diplomatic area,” the minister said.—Reuters