CHURCH BURNED, CHILD AND WOMEN KILLED IN PAKISTAN RIOTS

A child and four women are among at least eight Christians killed after 40 houses and a church were set ablaze amid riots with Muslims in eastern Pakistan, officials have said.

• Dozens of people were also injured in the violence in Pakistan's Gojra village, which erupted after allegations surfaced that a Quran had been defiled, the officials said on Saturday.
• "Six Christians including a child were killed and more than a dozen were injured in this sad incident," Shahbaz Bhatti, a federal minister of minorities, told the AFP news agency by telephone.
• "Some people blamed the Christians for the desecration of the holy Quran," he said adding that the accusations were "baseless".
• Mohammad Saleem, a correspondent for The Dawn newspaper in Pakistan, told Al Jazeera: "The clashes erupted when a boy of a Christian community allegedly desecrated a few pages of the holy Quran.
• "The Christians said the Muslims were in a mood to attack the locality."
• Police said that unrest between the two groups of villagers first flared late last month over a dispute over the Muslim holy book, which was later resolved.
• But tensions erupted on Saturday when the Christian group were attacked again and their houses set on fire.
• Desecrating the Quran is punishable by death under the blasphemy laws of mainly Muslim Pakistan, but no such sentences have been carried out.
• Christians, who make up less than three per cent of Pakistan's population of 150 million, say the blasphemy laws are used as an excuse to victimise them.

Source: Al Jazeera