PESHAWAR, July 14: Police on Sunday arrested 20 persons in connection with a grenade attack on a group of European tourists in the NWFP, officials said.

Most of the suspects were taken into custody from an Afghan refugee camp at Mansehra where the tourists were attacked on Saturday as they were stopped on their way to China along the mountainous Karakoram Highway, police said.

A district police official said forensic experts had found the pins of two grenades that were lobbed while the tourists were at an archaeological site in Mansehra, 150km east of here.

“Most of those arrested are from the Brady camp for Afghan refugees located about a kilometre away from where the incident took place,” a local police official told AFP.

The victims were rethinking their holiday plans on Sunday and were having meetings with the German diplomats in Islamabad, officials said.

They were on a bus carrying 27, mostly Germans, driving along the Karakoram Highway heading for China after starting their journey from Rawalpindi, just south of here.

A spokesman for the German Foreign Ministry in Berlin said the tourists were hosted by the German ambassador in Islamabad on Sunday. The wounded appeared to have suffered superficial injuries and all of them were out of danger.

“Whether they want to continue with the journey or not is up to them,” the German spokesman told AFP when contacted by telephone. “We have seen to it that they were taken to a hospital for a second check-up.”

A police official said the attackers had hurled two grenades at the group, slightly injuring seven Germans, one Austrian, a Slovenian, two Pakistani children and a local security guard.

A member of the tourist group said shortly after the attack on Saturday that they were looking at ancient stone pillars in the picturesque Mansehra area when they heard the blasts.

She said they had not been seriously hurt, but nine were taken back to hospital for observation after arrival in Rawalpindi.

District police chief Ahsan Mahboob said the coach had been heading towards the Chinese border when it was attacked in an area known for sectarian violence among rival groups.—AFP