Keep Pakistan’s Christians in your prayers.

ISLAMABAD, PAKISTAN (BosNewsLife) — Muslims torched Christian homes and “destroyed” a church in a slum area of Islamabad while suspected militants shot at another church outside Pakistan’s capital, after the jailing of a mentally handicapped Christian girl for “blasphemy”, witnesses said Tuesday, August 21.

“Our staff and a few [other] Christians went into [Islamabad’s] colony of Meherabadi [late Monday local time ],” added Farrukh H. Saif, executive director of Pakistani rights group World Vision In Progress (WVIP).

“We found that five houses were burned and one church was destroyed,” he told BosNewsLife. “Bibles [have been torn] to pieces and a [church] cross is broken”, the official said.

Elsewhere in Pakistan’s southern city of Karachi the Catholic St. Matthew’s Church was “attacked by unknown extremist at 2 a.m. local time,” added Saif, citing investigators.

“They opened fire at the Church building which damaged the front of the building,” in Karachi’s Pehlwan Goth neighborhood, he explained.