Outside St. Dominic’s Roman Catholic Church at Bahawalpur, the coffins of 14 victims, among them four women and four children, were spread under a blue sky.
Among the dead was Father Emanuel Mamih, 50, who presided over the Sunday service. Two non-Christians, including a police officer who had stood guard at the foot of the church steps, were among the 16 dead.
Inside the church Monday, women and men wailed, wept and sometimes cursed the killers. Men shouted for vengeance: “Blood for blood!” and “We will pay them in the same kind!” until a priest told them, “As true Christians you must turn the other cheek.”
It was unclear whether the attack was related to recent unrest over U.S.-led air strikes on Afghanistan. Some in Bahawalpur suspected Muslim militants enraged by Pakistan’s support of U.S. military action.
Police investigators believe the killers might have come from a radical, banned Muslim group aiming to avenge the deaths of 35 Pakistani fighters last week in Afghanistan. The young Muslims had gone to Kabul to fight for the Taliban and were killed in a bombing raid.
Church members estimated the number of mourners at 4,000, a remarkable number in a region where Christians are a small minority of the population. Most of the mourners traveled for hours to pay their respects to the victims and show their Muslim neighbors they are not afraid.
Shock and defiance
Pakistan’s small Christian community, estimated at 800,000, was in shock Monday over the fury of the attack at the Catholic church, which also had become a place of worship for Anglicans, Methodists, Presbyterians, Lutherans and other Protestants who did not have their own churches.
On Monday, emotional mourners told how the masked gunmen had targeted children and women and ignored pleas for mercy and the whimpering of wounded children.
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“Those who have killed our people do not belong to any religion,” said Malik Dad Masih. “No religion says that innocent people should be killed.”
The attack was the worst in memory against a Christian church. It drew condemnation as a “barbaric act” from world leaders and a promise by Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf that the killers would be brought to justice.
“The method used and the inhuman tactics employed clearly indicate involvement of trained terrorists of organizations bent on creating discord and disharmony in Pakistan,” Musharraf said in a statement.
After the air strikes on Afghanistan began, the Pakistani government ordered a police guard assigned to every Christian church. Muhammad Saleem, the solitary guard at St. Dominic’s, was unable to stop the assailants, who shot him dead.
On Monday, the number of guards at churches throughout Pakistan was doubled. In Islamabad, police armed with automatic weapons guarded Christian churches in a show of force.
Many Christians and even some government officials said that protection for Christian churches in this volatile nation was long overdue and that police had been slow to react after the killing.
Shabaz Bhatti, the spokesman for the Christian Liberation Front, an umbrella group of Christian denominations, said Islamic extremists had called for a holy war in Bahawalpur ever since the air strikes against Afghanistan began Oct. 7.
“A few days before the massacre we made an application to the police in Bahawalpur for more security. But nothing was done,” Bhatti said.
Militants blockade Silk Road
Elsewhere in Pakistan on Monday, Islamic militants in the north blockaded the fabled Silk Road and seized part of a town to protest their government’s support of U.S.-led strikes.
The Frontier Constabulary negotiated with pro-Taliban militants throughout the day, exhorting them to stand down from seven segments of the Karakoram Highway–Pakistan’s paved portion of the Silk Road–and, separately, to retreat from the remote town of Chilas.
They apparently refused. Officials said the 750-mile highway remained blocked Monday night with boulders and land mines in seven locations.
In Chilas, hundreds of armed pro-Taliban Pakistanis reportedly seized local government offices and occupied an abandoned airstrip. The region is dominated by ethnic Pashtuns. The Taliban also is predominantly Pashtun.
Hundreds of Pakistani fighters have crossed into Afghanistan recently. Many more are said to be waiting in border villages, answering the call of Sufi Mohammad, an Islamic cleric.
The Taliban ambassador to Pakistan expressed appreciation Monday to Pakistanis who want to help the Islamic militia. But Abdul Salam Zaeef said the time had not yet come.
“We have to turn down their requests because the ground battles have not started,” he said. “At this stage, with only air assaults in Afghanistan, there is no need and there is great danger in them being in Afghanistan.”
Tribune news services contributed to this report.