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Suspects blow themselves up in Pakistan

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan, Aug. 6 (UPI) -- Authorities in Pakistan said Tuesday that three men who earlier had attacked a Christian school blew themselves up when challenged by police.

Unidentified gunmen attacked the Murree Christian School on Monday and escaped after killing six Pakistanis, including two security guards.

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Early Tuesday, officers at a police check post near Jhika Gali, the site of Monday's deadly attack on the school, saw three men armed with ak-47 assault rifles entering a nearby village.

"They stopped for interrogation but they drew out hand grenades and threatened to blow themselves up along with the police party," a spokesman for the National Crisis Management Cell of the Interior Ministry told United Press International in Islamabad.

"The policemen freed them. The three suspects walked to a nearby river and blew themselves up," said the spokesman, adding that police have already recovered one body from the river.

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The local police believe that the gunmen were responsible for the attack on the Murree Christian School but the National Crisis Management Cell said it was still investigating the matter.

"The local police have a valid point but we cannot confirm the identity of those who blew themselves up until we complete our investigation," the spokesman said.

Jhika Gali is part of the Murree Hills, a tourist resort popular among foreigners and rich Pakistanis. Since the Murree Hills stay cool most of the year, Western missionaries have opened dozens of Christian schools in this area to avoid the Subcontinent's notorious heat.

There were 146 children -- mainly of Western missionaries working in Pakistan -- inside the school when it was attacked, but fortunately none of them was hurt.

The school administration and Pakistani officials say the school was attacked because it had a large number of children from Western nations. The students included Americans, Europeans, Australians and New Zealanders.

"It's an attempt to scare the Westerners out of the country. It was not simply a religiously motivated attack on Christians," the school's Australian director, Russell Morton told journalists soon after the attack.

Although Morton said the school should stay open, the school board met Tuesday evening to consider whether to close down the school to avoid future attacks. "The intention is to stay in Pakistan and run the school," said Morton before the board meeting.

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But the Australian government has already advised its nationals to defer traveling to Pakistan and urged those already there to leave.

The United States has already issued a similar warning.

So far nobody has claimed responsibility for the attack but Pakistani officials are blaming Muslim fundamentalists opposed to the government of President Pervez Musharraf.

Musharraf has annoyed the fundamentalists by dumping Pakistan's former Taliban allies to join the U.S.-led war on terror.

Police blame them for carrying out several attacks on Western targets inside Pakistan to spoil Musharraf's ties to the West.

On Jan. 23, Muslims militants kidnapped an American journalist, Daniel Pearl, from Karachi, and later killed him. Since then:

-- A grenade attack on a church in Islamabad on March 17 killed five people, including a U.S. diplomat and her daughter.

-- A car bomb in Karachi on May 8 killed 14 people, including 11 French navy engineers.

-- On June 14, a car bomb at the U.S. Consulate in Karachi killed 12 Pakistanis, including one embassy guard and one policeman.

-- Last month, a dozen people, including seven Germans, were injured in an apparent grenade attack on a tour bus north of Islamabad.

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