Pakistan steps up search for militants

Pakistani police announced yesterday that they were searching for 12 to 15 Islamist militants thought to be responsible for the recent attacks against Christian and foreign targets in Pakistan.

Marwat Shah, superintendent of police in Rawalpindi, said that police had identified the body of the slain attacker in Friday's grenade attack on a Christian hospital church in Taxila as Kamran Mir, a member of a banned jihadi organisation. Mr Shah declined to give the name of the banned group, saying that he was "not prepared to give them any publicity". Taxila's chief of police, Sikander Hayat, said Mir had been wounded by shrapnel from the grenade attack, in which three nurses were killed.

Mr Shah added that the police had recovered a second body after three alleged militants blew themselves up in the Jhelum river on Tuesday, the day after an attack at the Murree Christian school in which six people died. The trio was stopped while heading for Kashmir, raising suspicions that many militants have sought refuge in the troubled region.

On Friday night Indian authorities claimed to have killed three Islamist militants in Jammu, on the Indian side of Kashmir. The Indian government has maintained that cross-border terrorism, which it accuses Pakistan of abetting, has not completely stopped.

The Pakistani authorities, searching for the many violent opponents of President Pervez Musharraf's pro-US stance, believe they have adopted Western dress and trimmed their beards, or gone clean-shaven, to move around without attracting suspicion. That, and their readiness to kill themselves, are seen as indicating that they are running out of places to hide.

Police chiefs have promised that security arrangements at churches, Christian schools and other possible targets will be tightened. "This is a case of too little, too late," said Joseph Paul, a Protestant whose church was attacked in March, killing five people. "Now that foreigners have left Pakistan, the Christian community finds itself on the front line."