Church attacked by armed assailants injuring six including pastor.

Armed assailants vandalized a church and beat six people including a pastor the second such attack to occur this week.

The incident occurred Chakwal City (near Lahore) on Tuesday when a group of armed men attacked a church after allegedly being incited to violence by a local cleric. 

Pastor Suhail Masih and five other people were present at the church during the attack. The attackers beat brutally using metal bars and clubs.  After vandalizing the church the assailants escaped quickly, before police arrived. Those who sustained injuries were rushed to local hospitals.  All of them are said to have stable health..


Tariq Bhatti an influential person of the area had accused Pastor Suhail Masih and his fellows of preaching Christianity to Muslim residents of the area. “He accused us of trying to convert Muslim youth into Christians,” said Pastor Suhail.


Today the Christian Community of Chakwal held a demonstration in the area demanding the arrest of culprits and for registration of a First Incident report (FIR), as originally police refused to corroborate.

Local Christians have appealed to the government to heighten the security of churches and to punish those behind repeated attempts to harm Christians in Pakistan.

This attack comes days after Humayun Masih was charged for blasphemy in Lahore where a charged mob attempted to burn a church and vandalized homes (Click here).

Wilson Chowdhry, Chairman of the BPCA, said:

“Reports of violence towards Christians in Pakistan is reaching an all time high.  Failures in arresting culprits or prosecuting them have led to a sense of impunity amongst perpetrators of hate crime – this inversely has culminated in more frequent and vicious attacks. Unless the tide of hatred is stemmed through a stronger law enforcement and legal framework, attacks such as these will continue and result in mass Christian migration to other nations. Britain and America need to ensure their huge foreign aid budgets to Pakistan create safer communities for all and not just for Muslims, or they will be to blame for the Pakistani Christian exodus to easy nations such as Thailand, Malaysia and Sri Lanka, nations that simply cannot support the huge numbers already amassing there.”

(Click here to learn more about Pak-Christians in Thailand)