Islamabad | Monday
FIVE people were killed and more than 40 were injured in a grenade attack on a crowded church in the Pakistani capital Islamabad on Sunday, police and officials said.
A US diplomat whose wife and daughter were killed in the savage attack was still in a serious condition on Monday, doctors said.
Milton Green’s wife Barbara and their daughter Kirstan were among five people killed when an attacker hurled up to eight grenades into the Protestant International Church during a Sunday morning prayer service attended by diplomats’ families, other foreigners and Pakistani worshippers.
Green, whose son was also wounded, suffered multiple injuries including fractured limbs and was still in a “serious” condition at Islamabad’s Polyclinic Hospital, deputy medical superintendent said Doctor Zahid Hussain.
Green is in charge of the embassy’s information technology section. His wife Barbara was working as the embassy’s deputy human resources head while her 17-year-old daughter was a senior at Islamabad’s international school.
A Pakistani teacher at a US school here, Edward Good, was also deemed serious, while another patient of unknown identity was in a critical condition and had been transferred to the Pakistan Institute of Medical Sciences (Pims).
“We still have 11 people here including the two seriously wounded. All are in the surgical ward. One critically wounded patient has been shifted to Pims,” Hussain said.
Another seven patients were being treated at Pims, while 16 to 17 were at the Al-Shifa hospital.
A total of 46 people, mainly foreigners and including the Sri Lankan ambassador and his family, and the Philippine-born wife of a Japanese diplomat, were wounded in the attack.
The attack was the first on foreigners in heavily guarded and usually quiet Islamabad, but the second on a Christian church in Pakistan in six months.
Last October some 16 people from the country’s minority Christian community were killed in a massacre on a church in the eastern province of Punjab.
US ambassador to Pakistan Wendy Chamberlain condemned the attack as cowardly and senseless in a press conference here late on Sunday, and said it justified the US-led war on terror.
“There’s a hard lesson to be drawn from today’s tragic events … that President Bush was absolutely right to take on the terrorists,” she said.
“These terrorists will not win in the United States, they will not win in Pakistan and they will not win anywhere,” she said.
The United States issued a worldwide caution to its citizens on Monday warning of an increased risk of terrorist attack against US interests and advising Americans to “remain vigilant”.
“The US government continues to receive credible reports that extremist individuals are planning additional terrorist actions against US interests. Such actions may be imminent and include suicide operations,” the State Department said.
The embassy in Islamabad has also issued a fresh “Warden Notice” warning US citizens about the security threat after the church attack. – AFP