ISLAMABAD, June 21: Pakistan has intensified crackdown on extremist groups after last week’s car-bomb blast outside the US Consulate in Karachi, arresting dozens of suspected militants and placing police on the ‘highest alert’ for further assaults, officials said on Friday.

Security sources said that a series of arrests of people with suspected links to the banned militant groups were made in Sindh and Punjab.

Around 700 suspected extremists had already been detained following a grenade attack in March on a church in Islamabad’s diplomatic enclave that killed five persons.

The crackdown continued after a car-bombing outside Karachi’s Sheraton hotel in May which killed 14 persons.

However, the progress has been slow in identifying the people behind the attacks, and there have been no arrests of people believed to have directly participated in them.

In the latest round-up, police arrested suspected hardcore members of Lashkar-i-Jhangvi and Jaish-i-Mohammad, the sources said.

“We are picking up all those elements who provide shelter and support to the outsiders who have infiltrated into Pakistan and want to destabilise the government of President Musharraf,” a senior security official said.

Security officials say the al-Qaeda and Taliban fugitives from Afghanistan have teamed up with sympathisers and banned extremist groups in Pakistan to carry out terrorist attacks.

The terrorists, they say, have been able to gain support to form the alliances because of Islamabad’s backing to the US-led war on terror and Musharraf’s domestic crackdown on the militants.

Since December, Pakistan has arrested over 300 al-Qaeda and Taliban infiltrators, around 40 of them from rented houses in Faisalabad and Lahore.

At least six suspected non-Pakistani al-Qaeda members had been taken into custody in Karachi since Friday’s blast outside the US consulate, in which 12 people died, security sources said on Thursday.

A senior interior ministry official said on Friday the Pakistani police forces were put on highest alert following Friday’s car-bomb attack in Karachi.

“Police in all four provinces are on a state of highest alert since (last week’s) incident in Karachi and they are not taking any chances,” the official said. Paramilitary forces had also been deployed to step up security, he added.

“Foreigners’ residences and workplaces are under greater surveillance than they have ever been from the point of view of security,” he said—AFP