At least eight people were killed and 18 wounded in a drive-by shooting on a religious centre of an Islamic sect in central Pakistan on Friday, police and community leaders said.
The attack took place near the town of Mandi Bahauddin in the central province of Punjab when the men belonging to the Ahmadi sect were gathered for dawn prayers.
Ahmadis are not recognised Muslims in Pakistan and were declared non-Muslim and heretical in 1974.
Police said masked gunmen on three motorcycles opened fire with automatic weapons on the worshippers in the village of Mong, about 160 km (100 miles) south of the capital, Islamabad.
Human rights groups have long said Ahmadis are persecuted in Pakistan. In 1984, late president General Mohammad Zia-ul-Haq banned the sect from using Islamic forms of worship.
Ahmadis insist they are Muslims but believe the 19th-century founder of their sect, Mirza Ghulam Ahmad, was a prophet, a view considered heretical by other Muslims, who see Mohammad as the last prophet of God.
Places of worship of Ahmadis have been in attacked in the past, but today's attack, on the second day of the Islamic fasting month of Ramadan, was the first for several years.
Most sectarian violence in Pakistan involves militants from majority Sunni and minority Shi'ite sects, and hundreds of people have been killed in recent years.
In July, President Pervez Musharraf, who is fighting religious extremism at home, launched a fresh crackdown, particularly targeting preachers of hate.
Hundreds of militants, preachers and activists, mainly from sectarian groups, were detained after revelations that three of the four suicide bombers in the July 7th attacks in London were young British Muslims of Pakistani descent and at least one of them had visited an Islamist school or madrasa in Pakistan.