Islamabad, Aug 09: Three nurses were killed in Pakistan on Friday in an apparent grenade attack on a missionary hospital, and one of the attackers also died, a hospital official said.


The blast wounded several nurses, the official added. "The nurses were coming out of the chapel when someone threw explosives," said Clement Bakhshi, an accounts officer at the hospital in Taxila, near Islamabad.


"Three of our nurses have expired and up to 20 people have been injured, most of them nurses," he said, adding one of the suspected attackers had also died.


The incident came just days after six Pakistanis were killed when three gunmen attacked a Christian missionary school in the resort town of Murree, again not far from the capital.


Pakistani officials said that the raid on the school appeared to have been aimed at the foreign community rather than at a minority faith in Pakistan. In another recent attack on a Christian target, five people, including the wife and daughter of an American diplomat, died in a grenade attack on a church in Islamabad earlier this year. Bureau Report