Snipers to be deployed at churches for Christmas

Pakistan will deploy snipers and hundreds of extra police at churches this Christmas to prevent possible attacks on Christian, police said on Wednesday.The bulk of Pakistan’s tiny Christian community live in and around the eastern city of Lahore, where police said there were 433 churches.“We will deploy 2,500 policemen, including sharp shooters, to provide security to them at Christmas,” Nayab Haider, a police spokesman, said.Lahore has suffered a series of attacks blamed on Taliban and Al Qaeda-linked militants, part of a nationwide campaign of violence that has killed more than 4,700 people since July 2007.Recent kidnappings of a US development expert and the son of assassinated politician Salman Taseer have heightened security fears in Lahore, a city of eight million and considered Pakistan’s cultural capital.“We have placed 38 churches in category A, which are most sensitive, and among them, 20 are even more sensitive as we expect foreigners to visit these churches on Christmas Eve,” Haider said.Traffic would be banned outside these churches, and each one assigned seven policemen and a sniper, he added.