Pakistani police arrest five would-be train bombers

Mar 3, 2007, 13:27 GMT

Islamabad - Police in Pakistan's southern Sindh province on Saturday arrested five people who confessed to planning a bomb attack on a railway line near the city of Hyderabad, news reports said.

Explosives and firearms were seized from the terrorists who were detained in a raid on their hideout, but four accomplices escaped, Hyderabad regional police officer Sultan Salahuddin told the Aaj news channel.

He said the arrested men led the police to 12 kilos of explosives they had buried in a graveyard in the nearby town of Nawabshah for future acts of sabotage.

Salahuddin said they had been trained abroad and had carried out 39 terrorist attacks in Hyderabad and in Karachi, Pakistan's largest city and commercial centre, between 1999 and 2003.

He did not say what had motivated the planned attacks.

Pakistan has witnessed a wave of acts of sabotage and attacks in recent months that killed more than 45 people. Several incidents were suicide bombings thought to be retaliation by religious militants for Pakistani military operations against the Taliban and al-Qaeda in the tribal region bordering Afghanistan.