Pakistani police have detained three suspected members of a banned Islamic militant group in central Pakistan in connection with yesterday's church attack that killed three girls.
Shahid Iqbal, a senior police officer in the region where the attack took place, said the suspects belonged to Jaish-e-Mohammad, a group fighting Indian rule in disputed Kashmir.
The explosion at a church in a remote village 12 miles from the small industrial town of Daska was the latest in a string of attacks on Christians, who are a tiny minority in Pakistan's overwhelmingly Muslim population.
"We have caught three men. They had received armed training... at a Jaish centre in Pakistan," Iqbal told Reuters by telephone on Thursday. "I cannot release their names but they are being questioned right now."
Police said the three came from the village where the attack took place.
The blast, which police initially blamed on a grenade, killed two of the girls instantly - decapitating one of them. It wounded 14 other people.
About 50 people, mostly children and women, were attending special prayers in the church at the time.
President Pervez Musharraf banned Jaish-e-Mohammad and several other Islamic groups this year as part of a campaign to stem Islamic militancy in his country.
Suspected Islamic militants, angered by Musharraf's support for the U.S.-led war on terror, have been blamed for a spate of attacks on Christians and foreigners in Pakistan.
Police officials said Jaish-e-Mohammad, or the Army of Mohammad, was active in the area and all three detained men were residents of the village.
The group was formed by Maulana Masood Azhar, one of three Muslim militants released by India in 1999 in exchange for the freedom of passengers of a hijacked airliner.
He has been under house arrest in the Pakistani city of Bahawalpur, 500 km south of the capital, Islamabad, since December 2001.
Daska is about 200 km southeast of Islamabad.