“Witnesses said two of the assailants wanted to enter the main hall where around 400 worshipers were attending Sunday service,” VOA reported. “But police guards at the main gate engaged the attackers, killing one of them and leading the second to blow himself up outside the hall. The explosion fatally wounded a security guard, police said.”

A Reuters report says that 45 people in the church were wounded. “The gunmen wearing explosives-filled vests stormed the church in Quetta city when Sunday services had just opened, exploding a suicide vest and shooting at the Christian worshippers, said Sarfraz Bugti, the home minister of Baluchistan province.”

The daily Star Newspaper in Lebanon says that “Daesh (ISIS) claimed an attack on a church in the Pakistani city of Quetta Sunday which killed at least five people, the group’s Amaq news agency said in an online statement.”

Quetta is in the Pakistan region of Baluchistan which borders Iran and Afghanistan. ISIS and Alqaeda are known to operate in the strategically important region.