Meanwhile, riot police had been deployed in the troubled area to control the situation. A police officer Multan Khan said the incident started Friday when a young Muslim man accused the Christian man of committing blasphemy. A large crowd from a nearby mosque went to the Christian man's home on Friday night. Police, however, took the man into custody to try to pacify the crowd, Khan said.
Khan said the mob returned on Saturday and began ransacking Christian homes and setting them on fire. They pelted police officials with stones, leaving several injured. Police failed to contain protesters. The police then requested some Muslim clerics to intervene and bring the situation under control. Punjab Law Minister Rana Sanaullah said all those involved in acts of arson would be arrested.
Chief Minister Punjab while presiding over an emergent meeting suspended the concerned police officials and ordered the rehabilitation of the affected Christian families. He ordered a judicial inquiry into the incident and try the accused persons in the special courts. He also asked the Muslim community to show religious harmony. There was no loss of life as hundreds of Christian families had fled the area overnight fearing for their safety. Chief Minister announced Rs 200,000 for each affected family for rehabilitation.
AFP adds: Thousands of angry protesters on Saturday set ablaze more than 100 houses of Pakistani Christians over a blasphemy row in Lahore, officials said. Over 3,000 Muslim protesters turned violent over blasphemous remarks allegedly made by Sawan Masih, a 26-year-old Christian, three days earlier, police official Multan Khan said. The exact number of houses in Joseph Colony, a Christian neighbourhood in Badami Bagh area, were not immediately known but police and rescue officials said they belonged to low to middle-class families from the minority community.
Pakistan's President Asif Ali Zardari and Prime Minister Raja Pervez Ashraf have ordered an immediate inquiry into the attacks. "Police arrested Masih, a sanitary worker, on Friday night while the incident actually happened on Wednesday evening," Khan told AFP. He said that the arrest was made when Masih's barber friend Shahid Imran complained that he had made blasphemous remarks, adding that Christians had fled the area on Friday evening, fearing a backlash.
Protesters began to assemble in the area on Saturday morning and later set on fire houses and other items including furniture, crockery, auto rickshaws, bicycles and motorbikes belonging to local Christians. "Thick clouds of smoke engulfed the small houses, mostly consisting of one or two rooms, and many of them looked like charred shells," said an AFP reporter at the scene.
Police said protesters burnt 25 houses but Dr Ahmad Raza, in-charge of local rescue operations, and the independent Human Rights Commission of Pakistan (HRCP) put the number at more than 100. "At least 160 houses, 18 shops and two small churches were burnt by protesters," Raza, who was busy in rescue operations in the area, told AFP.
Expressing grief and anger at the attack, HRCP chairwoman Zohra Yusuf put the number of houses burnt during the protest at over 100. Police baton-charged the protesters to disperse them from the neighbourhood. There was no loss of life reported during the violence but 20 policemen were slightly injured during clashes, officials said.
Private Pakistani TV channels showed footage of violence from the scene as many masked members of the mob damaged or burned down households. President Asif Ali Zardari and Prime Minister Raja Pervez Ashraf have both ordered an investigation into the violence.
"President Zardari called for a report into this unfortunate incident and said such acts of vandalism against minorities tarnish the image of the country," his spokesman Farhatullah Babar said in a statement. Prime Minister Ashraf also ordered an "expeditious inquiry and measures to stop recurrence of such incidents in future", his office said in a statement.
Provincial law minister Rana Sanaullah said in Lahore that the government would not spare those involved in the attack. "These people committed a serious crime... there was no moral, legal or religious ground to indulge in such an act," he told a private TV channel. Yusuf criticised the provincial government in a statement and said "it totally failed in providing protection to a minority community under siege". Shamaun Alfred Gill, a spokesman for the All Pakistan Minorities Alliance, also condemned the incident and demanded that the government provide security to Christians.