http://today.reuters.co.uk/news/newsArt ... KISTAN.xml

Sat Jul 8, 2006 11:17 AM BST

PESHAWAR, Pakistan (Reuters) - Pakistan has arrested eight Sunni Muslim militants suspected of involvement in sectarian violence in a remote northern region, security officials said on Saturday.

The suspects belonged to Lashkar-e-Jhangvi, one of Pakistan's most feared militant groups, and were arrested on Thursday in the town of Chitral.

The men were suspected of involvement in last year's assassination of a leading Shi'ite Muslim cleric in the town of Gilgit that sparked sectarian violence in which 11 people were killed, a senior security official said.

"One of them has confessed that he was involved in the murder," he said on condition of anonymity.

Lashkar-e-Jhangvi was oulawed by the government in 2001 and police has blamed it for much of the sectarian bloodletting in the country.

It has also been implicated in attacks on Western targets in Pakistan, including the murder of U.S. reporter Daniel Pearl in 2002, and in two attempts to kill President Pervez Musharraf.

Thousands of people have been killed in tit-for-tat attacks by majority Sunni and minority Shi'ite Muslim militants in the country over the past two decades. Shi'ites account for around 15 percent of Pakistan's 160 million population.