NEW DELHI (CWNews.com) - Armed assailants broke into a Catholic school run by the Agra Archdiocese at Kosikalan, south of New Delhi, early today and attacked the priest, nuns, and their maid with iron rods under the pretext of looting.

    Though the masked intruders cleaned out the school-convent of cash and other valuables, Daughters of Sacred Heart Sister Arokia Mary said it seemed their intention was "not just looting." If they were interested in money only, the nun said, "they would not have pulled out us (nuns) from the toilets we had locked up ourselves and beat us."

    The nun recounted the one and half hour terror while attending to the convent maid with severe head injuries and broken arms in the Holy Family Hospital in New Delhi to which Father K. K. Thomas with head injuries and fractures was taken this afternoon.

    Archbishop Vincent Concessao of Agra said the intention of the 15 assailants was to "terrorize" the school staff rather than looting it. "Whoever came their way was brutally assaulted," said Archbishop Concessao.

    "On the face of it, it looks like an act of (robbery). But, there is definitely something sinister behind it," said Father Donald De Souza, deputy secretary general of Catholic Bishops Conference of India. "It is the first time that church schools and convents are being singled out," he said, pointing out that half a dozen cases of similar midnight attacks on church schools and convents have been reported in the last month.