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Masked gunmen firing Kalashnikov rifles burst through the front gates of a Christian school Monday, killing six people and wounding three in the latest attack against Western interests since Pakistan joined the war against terrorism.
None of the 150 students, including 30 Americans, or the mostly British staff was hurt in the attack against the Murree Christian School in this resort town in the Himalayan foothills about 35 miles northeast of the capital, Islamabad.
All the dead were Pakistanis, including two security guards, a receptionist, a cook, a carpenter and a bystander, police said. A Filipino woman, two of whose children attend the school, was shot in the hand. The hospital said two other people were wounded but gave no details.
"Their goal was to hit foreigners," police district commander Moravet Shah said of the attackers, who escaped. "What we know is that they were terrorists. Whether they were religious terrorists, we have to determine."
It was the sixth attack against Westerners or Western interests in Pakistan this year, most of which have been blamed on Islamic militant groups angered by President Pervez Musharraf's backing of the US war on terrorism. Since October, two churches have been attacked, leaving 20 dead, including two Americans.
"There certainly seems to be an indication that there is a certain element in our society who feel aggrieved by the foreigners generally," Interior Secretary Tasneem Noorani said on Pakistan state television.
In Monday's attack, up to four clean-shaven men believed in their mid-20s approached a guard post erected just three months ago at the entrance to the school, police and school officials said.
The men pulled weapons out of duffel bags and opened fire, killing a security guard and a Pakistani man who happened to be nearby.
The gunmen then stormed through the gates, shooting and killing a second guard and a school receptionist and blasting the windows of a dormitory. Another security guard returned fire, forcing the attackers to race across the school grounds, hop over a back fence and disappear into the woods.
On their way out, the gunmen shot dead the cook and the carpenter, who was hiding near the opposite end of the grounds from where the attack began.
"We heard the shots so we all hid under tables and in cupboards and things until we got the all-clear," said an Englishman who would not give his name. "All of the parents then came and got their kids."
About two hours after the shooting, shaken parents and students emerged from behind the school's green metal gates. Their eyes were wide with fear as they wandered past the front guard shack, its floor splattered with blood.
Shah said police believe that at least one suspect was injured because a trail of blood was found near the fence. Investigators recovered three duffel bags and spent Kalashnikov cartridges.
Police found a note at the scene expressing "resentment against world powers," Shah said. He refused to elaborate. Another policeman, who did not identify himself, said the note referred to the "unjust" killings of Muslims, Palestinians and Kashmir fighters.
"It wasn't an attack by anyone with the interest of Pakistan at heart," Russell Morton, the school's Australian director, said. "The parents of our kids are working all over this country for the good of this country. Anybody who thinks this kind of attack helps Pakistan is a complete fool."
The US State Department condemned the attack and extended its "deepest sympathies to the families of the Pakistani victims," spokesman Philip T. Reeker said. Pakistani Information Minister Nisar Memon branded the attack as terrorism and said "Pakistan is firmly resolved to fight terrorism."
Morton said the school had received no threats and had never been attacked since it was founded in 1956 to train children of Christian missionaries working in South Asia.
"I think there is a determination to stick it out and continue to work within Pakistan," he said. "But the board will have to consider very carefully the implications for the children."
The school was closed for four months, until reopening in February, due to security concerns amid the US bombing in Afghanistan.
Shah said he warned the school three months ago that it could be targeted because of its religious affiliation and identification as a foreign institution.
After the warning, campus authorities erected the long stone wall with two guard shacks on either end that now blocks the campus from the street.
The student body represents about 20 nationalities and includes not only children of Christian missionaries but also some foreign diplomats, Morton said.
The school is nestled in a three-acre wooded tract 7,400 feet above sea level in the town of Murree, one of the many "hill stations" set up by the British during the 19th century to escape the oppressive summer heat of British India.
Since Musharraf threw his support behind US military action in Afghanistan in October, Pakistan has seen a number of major attacks.
In October, gunmen opened fire a Protestant congregation in the city of Behawalpur, killing 16 people. On March 17, an attacker hurled grenades into a Protestant congregation in Islamabad, killing himself and four others, including an American woman and her 17-year-old daughter.
Wall Street Journal correspondent Daniel Pearl was kidnapped in January in Karachi and later murdered. On May 8, a bomb exploded in front of a Karachi hotel, killing 11 French engineers and three Pakistanis.
Another explosion killed 12 Pakistanis outside the US Consulate in Karachi on June 14. Last month, grenades were thrown at a bus carrying European tourists in northern Pakistan, injuring a dozen people, most of them Germans.
(China Daily August 7, 2002)
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