 LAHORE, Pakistan - Pakistani police arrested eight Islamic militants on Sunday suspected of involvement in 2002 grenade on a Christian school and a church in which 10 people were killed. The suspects, caught during raids by special police teams in the city of Lahore, were plotting another attack, said senior police officer Masood Aziz. ‘We had information that they were planning a terrorist attack in Baluchistan (province) and they were gathering weapons and explosives for that,’ Aziz told a news conference.
| I'm mildly surprised that they were arrested. I'll be more surprised if they're taken to trial. I'll be flabbergasted if they do hard time. |
| Community service, doing outreach to troubled yoots. |
The suspects were members of banned Sunni Muslim militants groups Lashkar-e-Jhangvi and Al Furqan. Both are believed to have links with Al Qaeda.
The suspects were believed linked to two attacks. In the first, militants attacked a school for the children of foreign missionaries near the hill town of Murree, 50 km (30 miles) northeast of Islamabad, on Aug. 5, 2002, killing six Pakistanis. Four days later, four nurses were killed in a grenade attack on a church at a hospital in the town of Taxila, near Islamabad. |