Two Americans among five people killed in grenade attack on church in Pakistani capital

? Two unidentified attackers hurled grenades into a Protestant church filled with Sunday worshippers, killing five people, including two Americans, police and U.S. officials said.

The U.S. Embassy in Islamabad confirmed the American deaths but did not release their identities. Senior Police Official Nasir Khan Durrani described the attack as “a terrorist act.”

The nationalities of the other victims were unavailable.

About 40 people were also injured, and police said 10 Americans were among them. An incomplete count of the injured also showed 12 Pakistanis, five Iranians, one Iraqi, one Ethiopian, one German, and a Sri Lankan diplomat, police said.

After the attack, dozens of police and soldiers surrounded the Protestant International Church, located in a heavily guarded diplomatic compound about one kilometer (half mile) from the U.S. Embassy. Ambulances rushed to the scene and rescuers scrambled to help the injured.

Durrani said five people were killed. Four bodies – three of them female – were brought to the Polyclinic Hospital in Islamabad. Witnesses said two of the dead were teen-age girls.

It was the second attack against Christians in Pakistan since Sept. 11. after which the Pakistani abandoned support for the Afghan Taliban and backed the U.S.-led coalition against terrorism.

Witnesses said the assailants entered the back of the church during the sermon and began hurling grenades at the congregation, numbering about 70.

Three of the grenades exploded, and the attackers escaped despite the presence of security guards at the scene, police said.

“I saw two men come into the back of the church into the main sanctuary and threw what looked like hand grenades,” said Cindy Jess, an American who did not give her hometown.

“There was total pandemonium,” said Mark Robinson of Los Angeles, California. He spoke at the clinic, where he was being treated for a slight leg injury.

Elisabeth Mundhenk, 54, of Hamburg, Germany, said she took refuge under a piano when the first explosion rocked the church but still suffered shrapnel wounds in the leg.

“There was blood, blood, blood,” she said while awaiting treatment at the hospital. “It was horrific. There was a horrible smell and we could barely breathe.”

Although no group claimed responsibility, suspicion fell on Islamic militants, angered by President Pervez Musharraf’s crackdown on Islamic extremism.

“It’s a highly deplorable attempt to spoil our relations with foreign countries. Choosing this place is meant to embarrass the government,” Pakistani Law Minister Khalid Ranjha said.

Sectarian violence has been on the rise in Pakistan, but most of the attacks have been against members of Pakistan’s Shiite Muslim minority. Extremists from the majority Sunni Muslim community have been blamed for those attacks.

Despite the increase in sectarian violence, Ranjha said officials thought the church was well-protected. Such attacks in the Pakistani capital, where security is higher than elsewhere in the country, are relatively infrequent.

“The attack shows that those who carried it out were committed people,” Ranjha said.

The last attack on Christians in Pakistan occurred Oct. 28 when gunmen opened fire on worshippers in the Punjab provincial town of Behawalpur, killing 15 worshippers and a Muslim guard.

Religious tension had been expected to rise with the start this weekend of the Islamic month of Moharram, which marks the start of the Muslim year.

Moharram is especially revered by Shiite Muslims, who mark the assassination of Imam Hussain in the year 680 of the Western calendar.

Musharraf launched his crackdown Jan. 12, when he banned five Islamic extremist groups and announced measures to extend control over religious schools considered a breeding ground for terrorism.

More than 2,000 people were arrested, but many have since been released.