Devastating church bombing haunts Christmas

All Saints church still bears physical scars of Sept 22 bombing.

PESHAWAR: For Christians in Peshawar, Christmas this year will be dominated by absent faces.

Eighty-two people were killed when a devastating double suicide attack targeted their place of worship three months ago.

All Saints Church still bears the physical scars of the September 22 bombing, believed to be the deadliest ever against Pakistan's Christian community.

Two bombers blew themselves up in the courtyard of the church as worshippers exchanged greetings after a service in an attack that horrified even a country as hardened to violence as Pakistan.

The courtyard walls are still peppered with holes gouged by the hundreds of ragged metal ball bearings that were packed into the explosive vests to cause maximum carnage.

Inside the church, a clock is stopped at 11:43 - the time the bombers struck and for some worshippers the pain of that day is still fresh.

Anwar Khokhar, 53, lost six members of his family in the attack, including three of his brothers. For him, the season that for most Christians represents hope and happiness brings no joy but only a keener sense of the bitterness of his loss.

"As Christmas gets nearer I miss them more and more. I miss them as much as it is possible to miss anyone," he told AFP after attending the last Sunday service before Christmas.

"I miss our relatives so sadly, one of my brothers especially. It's so hard that he's not with us this Sunday and especially at Christmas."

In his sermon the vicar, Reverend Ejaz Gill, tried to offer comfort, saying the victims are at peace and will join with their loved ones spiritually to celebrate Christmas.

But for some the wounds are still too fresh and after the service a group of women gathered to weep in the courtyard, which is adorned with colour posters of the dead, stifling tears in their brightly-coloured "Sunday best" headscarves.

One woman in particular was inconsolable, burying her face in one of the posters showing a bright-eyed teenage girl, sobbing uncontrollably.

The seemingly senseless slaughter of so many innocent civilians shocked the country and it is still not clear who carried out the attack.

Christians have suffered attacks and riots in recent years over allegations of blasphemy, often spurious, but bombings such as the All Saints blast are very rare.

They make up just two percent of Pakistan's overwhelmingly Muslim population of 180 million and most are poor, relegated to dirty, undesirable jobs.

Being a small community they are close-knit and as housewife Nasreen Anwar explained, almost no Christian in Peshawar was untouched by September's carnage.

"In every family, one or two people were killed, so how can we celebrate Christmas? There will be no happiness," she told AFP.

Anwar, 35, lost her 14-year-old daughter in the blast while her nine-year-old daughter was so badly wounded she now uses a colostomy bag and faces further surgery in the new year.

"But everyone shared our sorrow - Christian, Muslim came to our homes and shared our sorrows," she said.

Gill agreed the tragedy had brought the community closer together.

"We are not fractured. After the blasts it united us, not only the Christians of Peshawar but Christians all over Pakistan and the world came and showed their support for us," he told AFP.

Security at the church has been stepped up since the attacks, with extra guards manning the gateway through the thick blast walls and barbed wire and a fingerprint-scan entry system installed but not yet operational.

Gill is still waiting for the one million rupees the government promised to repair the damage to the church, built in the 1880s.

But even when the walls are pristine again, it will take rather longer to heal the emotional scars of his traumatised congregation.