LAHORE, Pakistan - Suspected Islamist militants attacked two mosques packed with hundreds of worshippers from a minority sect in eastern Pakistan on Friday, holding hostages and battling police, officials and witnesses said. Some 80 people died, and dozens were wounded in the worst attack ever against the Ahmadi sect. The assaults in Lahore were carried out by at least seven men, including three suicide bombers, officials said. Two attackers were captured. At one point, a gunman fired bullets from atop a minaret. It was one of the first times militants have deployed gun and suicide squads and taken hostages in a coordinated attack on a religious minority in Pakistan. Shiite Muslims have borne the brunt of individual suicide bombings and targeted killings for years, though Christians and Ahmadis also have faced violence. The long-standing threat to minorities in this Muslim-majority, U.S-allied nation has been exacerbated as the Sunni extremist Taliban and al-Qaida movements have spread. Ahmadis are reviled as heretics by mainstream Muslims for their belief that their sect's founder was a savior foretold by the Quran, Islam's holy book. The group has experienced years of state-sanctioned discrimination and occasional attacks by radical Sunni Muslims in Pakistan, but never before in such a large and coordinated fashion. The attacks Friday took place in the Model Town and Garhi Shahu neighborhoods of Lahore, Pakistan's second-largest city and one of its politically and militarily most important. The assault at Model Town was relatively brief, and involved four attackers spraying worshippers with bullets before exploding hand grenades, said Sajjad Bhutta, Lahore's deputy commissioner. Several kilometers away at Garhi Shahu, the standoff lasted around four hours. TV footage showed an attacker atop a minaret of the mosque at one point in the siege, firing an assault rifle and throwing hand grenades. Outside, police traded bullets with the gunmen, an Associated Press reporter saw.
