ISLAMABAD, Aug 11: Last week’s attacks on Christian targets in Pakistan may signal a new offensive strategy by religious activists angered by Pakistan’s alliance with the United States, military and intelligence sources said on Sunday.

Military spokesman Maj-Gen Rashid Qureshi told AFP that the authorities had anticipated “continuing fallout” from President Pervez Musharraf’s decision to join the US-led war on terror, but were “a little surprised” the new strategy had taken so long to materialize.

Three people were killed on Friday in an attack on a church at a Christian hospital in Taxila.

On Monday masked armed men raided a Christian school for foreign aid workers’ children in the Murree hills, killing six local people.

“These were ‘soft’ targets, whereas previously the focus of the militants was on high profile targets such as the US consulate and the French naval engineers in Karachi,” he said, referring to car-bombings in Karachi.

Qureshi said the attacks on more vulnerable targets outside major urban centres represented “a certain economy of effort” in damaging Pakistan’s economy and international reputation, but was also evidence security measures were thwarting the plans of militants.

“There is evidence that the attacks on the Christian school at Murree and the church at Taxila are connected. There is also evidence they have support from ‘outside powers’, but in reality these people are just a minuscule minority of radicals and they will be apprehended,” he said.

Qureshi said that security forces had received “good information” and were close to arresting two assailants who killed the three medical staff at Taxila.

Intelligence sources in Karachi identified a new group as the Lashkar-i-Omar, telling AFP it had links with remnants of the al Qaeda network of Osama bin Laden and had established an undetermined number of suicide squads inside Pakistan.