Four Pakistanis, including three nurses, died in an apparent grenade attack on a Christian missionary hospital in Pakistan today, and up to 20 people were wounded, hospital and police officials said.
A police source said one attacker appeared to have blown himself up in the assault, which comes four days after six Pakistanis were shot dead in a gun attack on a Christian missionary school northeast of Islamabad.
"The nurses were coming out of the chapel when someone threw explosives," said Mr Clement Bakhshi, an accounts officer at the hospital in Taxila, around 12 miles west of the capital Islamabad.
"Three of our nurses have expired and up to 20 people have been injured, most of them nurses."
All those killed and wounded were Pakistanis, a hospital official said. Two of the wounded were in serious condition. The nurses killed were all female as were most of the wounded.
A police source in Taxila said there were three attackers. "One was killed and two fled, and the explosives were tied to the body of the one who died."
Pakistani officials said the raid on Monday, on a school for foreign students in the resort town of Murree, appeared to be aimed at the foreign community rather than a minority faith in Muslim-majority Pakistan.
Police said on Wednesday they had evidence that three men who blew themselves up on Tuesday, after being challenged by police in Pakistani-held Kashmir, were the same gang that carried out the school attack.
In March, five people including the wife and daughter of an American diplomat died in a grenade attack on a church in Islamabad. Last October, 16 Christians and one Muslim were massacred in a church in Bahawalpur in the populous Punjab province.
Islamic militants have been incensed by President Pervez Musharraf's decision to support the US-led war on terror against Osama bin Laden's al Qaeda network and the former Taliban government in Afghanistan.