Six killed in religious attack in Pakistan

November 12, 2000
Web posted at: 7:30 AM HKT (2330 GMT)

SARGODHA, Pakistan (Reuters) -- Six people were killed in the central province of Punjab in an armed attack on a religious center for Pakistan's Ahmadia sect, police said on Saturday.

They said the attack took place on Friday in the village of Takht Hazara near the Punjab town of Sargodha after members of the sect had allegedly beaten up a Muslim preacher.

Police said several dozen villagers attacked the place of worship after hearing about the beating of the preacher.

A spokesman for the Ahmadia community said in a statement that five of its members were shot dead and its place of worship was set on fire. Police said one attacker was also killed.

No other details were available from the remote village.

The attack came almost two weeks after four Ahmadia members were killed in a similar one near the town of Sialkot, by the Indian border about 130 kilometers (80 miles) northeast of the provincial capital Lahore.

Human rights groups have long complained that Ahmadis were persecuted in Pakistan, where a 1974 constitutional amendment declared the sect outside Islam and a 1984 decree by late General Muhammad Zia-ul-Haq banned it from using Islamic forms of worship or describing its places of worship as mosques.

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