Fire attack fails in PJ church

(The Malaysian Insider) PETALING JAYA, Jan 8 — A Catholic church next to the Assunta Hospital here came under attack early this morning, just hours after another church in nearby Kuala Lumpur was torched.

Roman Catholic church officials said some homemade explosives were lobbed into the Church of the Assumption in Jalan Templar at about 4am.

“It did not explode,” said Father Lawrence Andrew, the editor of Catholic paper Herald.

Lawrence was himself informed of the incident through a text message sent out by Assumption parish priest Father Phillips Muthu.

“Someone threw homemade kerosene explosives into Assumption Church, Jalan Templar, Petaling Jaya at 4am. Am going to Police later. Earlier the Metro Tabernacle was burned in Desa Melawati, media has filed story,” said the message forwarded to The Malaysian Insider.

This is the second such reported attack on a church in the last 12 hours.

A Protestant church, Metro Tabernacle in leafy Desa Melawati, was torched at around midnight.

The fire took out the church’s administrative office, which is housed on the ground floor of its three-storey premises.

Eyewitnesses recounted seeing several people on motorcycles stopping in front of the church and smashing the glass windows to pour flammable liquid and igniting the blaze.

Church officials have reported the attack to the police.

Kuala Lumpur police chief Mohamad Sabtu Osman said it was too early to link the attack on the church to Muslim protests over a High Court ruling allowing the weekly Herald to publish the word “Allah” to refer to God in the Christian context.

“’We are still investigating,”’ he is reported to have said.

Mohamad Sabtu also warned Muslims not to take part in planned protests at several mosques in the Klang Valley after Friday prayers.

The mercury is expected to rise and all fire stations have been put on the alert.

The police have also tightened their nightly patrols around churches in the past week following the High Court ruling on Dec 31.