5 ''facilitators'' of Pak church attack held

Lahore, July 31

Five people believed to have been ‘facilitators’ of the Pakistani Taliban suicide bombers who attacked two packed churches here during a Sunday mass in March have been arrested.

In one of the worst attacks on the minority community in recent times, two suicide bombers blew themselves up at the gates of St John's Catholic Church and Christ Church attack in Youhanbad — Pakistan's largest Christian colony that houses over 100,000 Christians — killing 17 people and wounding more than 70 on March 15.

Police and the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) arrested the five after they raided a house in Lahore. The five have been shifted to an undisclosed location for interrogation, police sources said on Friday.

Police is also learnt to have seized a cache of weapons and explosives from the arrested, who, they claim, belong to the Tahreek-i-Taliban Pakistan (TTP). Jamat-ul-Ahrar — a splinter of TTP that is also believed to have carried out a suicide attack that killed 60 people at the Wagah border in September last year  — claimed the attack.

Christians make up less than 2 per cent of Pakistan's overwhelmingly Muslim population. — PTI