LAHORE, Aug 15: Police claimed on Thursday to have arrested 12 alleged terrorists involved in bombing of Christians in Murree, Taxila and Islamabad.

Punjab IG Malik Asif Hayat told newsmen that police had got the lead from the belongings of a terrorist killed during a terrorist attack on the Taxila chapel on Aug 9.

The IG said the police then conducted raids and arrested 12 members of a group that had vowed to kill government officials and foreigners, especially the Westerns.

He said that most of the arrested belonged to the Punjab and were nabbed from Lahore, Mianwali, Muzaffargarh, Multan and Layyah.

They were identified as Saifur Rehaman (ring leader) who belonged to Layyah, Anayatullah of Balochistan, Abu Bakar of Muzaffargarh, Muhammad Azhar of Gujaranwala, Muhammad Asif of North Karachi, Abdul Qadeer and Shahid Nadeem of Rahim Yar Khan, Sabir of Taxila, Muhammad Yousaf of Layyah, Atiqur Rehman of Kot Addu, Abubakar Saddiq of Shujaabad and Muhammad Iayaz of Lahore. Their ages ranged between 20 to 28, the IG said.

Six rocket-launchers, 490 detonates and 20 kg of explosive have been recovered from their possession.

The IG said that some five members of the group were still at large and the police would soon hunt them down.

The IG said the group was “Afghanistan trained” and most of its members belonged to a banned militant organization.

During interrogation, it was revealed that the terrorists visited Afghanistan to wage a war against the US lead forces. On their return to Pakistan they made plans to attack certain government officials for their support to the US and Western nationals, he said.

Malik Asif said the group used to make a team of three members to carry out the attacks. Before each strike, the terrorists rented houses near their targets and hid weapons at another place.

The IG said that this group was financed by some one from Karachi. So far, they had been paid about Rs600,000 to buy weapons and to meet other expenses, he said. He said that the police teams had been constituted to track down the financiers. He said the terrorists had bought the weapons from tribal areas.

The IG said all the arrested terrorists had been put into different cells to avoid any eventuality.

Answering questions, the IG said that the group had no connection with Shiekh Omar, Naeem Bukhari and Akram Lahori.”It’s a new group reacting to the US-led attacks on Afghanistan. Many government officials and Christian’s worship places were on their hit list.”

The IG said that besides these 12 terrorists who came back to Pakistan after the war in Afghanistan, the government had arrested 29 other terrorists. “Some 60 were still on the run.”

He said that the terrorists had attacked Taxila chapel because it was hugely financed by the foreigners.

Malik Asif said that they had asked the foreigners to restrict their movement and brought their activities into the knowledge of the police so that it could provide them proper security.

The security of government officials had also been beefed up, he added.

The IG denied that any other foreign agency took part in the operation. He said that it was a sole Punjab police operation. However, he said the CIA had helped the police in certain cases.