Gunmen wound Sri Lanka cricketers in Pakistan attack
LAHORE, Pakistan (Reuters) A dozen gunmen attacked Sri Lanka's cricket team on Tuesday with rifles, grenades and rockets, wounding six players and a British coach and killing at least eight Pakistanis in Lahore, officials said.
The attackers fired AK-47s and rockets and hurled grenades at Sri Lanka's team bus as it was being driven to Lahore's Gaddafi stadium for the third day of a match against Pakistan.
Team captain Mahela Jayawardene said the gunmen first shot at the tires then at the bus itself.
"We all dived to the floor to take cover," he told Reuters by telephone from the stadium, before being evacuated by helicopter along with the rest of the team, including all the wounded.
At least eight people were killed in the attack, which lasted close to 30 minutes, including six police, according to statement from Pakistan Prime Minister Yousaf Raza Gilani's office.
The driver was hailed as hero for steering the bus to safety as gunmen sprayed it with bullets from all sides and players screamed "go, go, go."
"I was turning the bus toward the stadium near the main roundabout when I saw a rocket fired at us... it missed us and hit an electric pole, after which all hell broke loose," driver Mehar Mohammad Khalil told Reuters, standing beside his bus.
The driver of a bus following behind, carrying the Australian umpires, was killed.
Bomb and gun attacks, mostly carried out by Islamist militants linked to the Taliban or al Qaeda, have become commonplace in Pakistan over the past few years because of the government's support for the United States.
Tuesday's incident had echoes of an attack on the Indian city of Mumbai last November in which around 170 people were killed and which led to the Indian cricket team cancelling its planned tour of Pakistan. The Sri Lankan team accepted an invitation to replace the Indians.
Westerners in Pakistan knew they could be targeted, but few analysts could divine any reason for attacking the Sri Lankans, other than to send a message that no visitors were safe.
INDIA ACCUSED
India blamed the Mumbai attack on Pakistan-trained militants and the incident brought international pressure on Pakistan to crack down on jihadi groups that its security agencies have been friendly with in the past.
The group blamed by India for Mumbai, Lashkar-e-Taiba, came from Pakistan's Punjab province, whose capital is Lahore.
"One thing I want to say, it's the same pattern, the same terrorists who attacked Mumbai," said Punjab Governor Salman Taseer.
A Pakistani minister accused India of being behind the attack.
"The evidence which we have got shows that these terrorists entered from across the border from India," Sardar Nabil Ahmed Gabol, minister of state for shipping, told Geo television. "This was a conspiracy to defame Pakistan internationally."
Witnesses saw gunmen with rifles and backpacks running through the streets and firing on people and vehicles around the massive stadium in the morning attack. Television footage showed some of the attackers, who looked to be in their late teens.
The Punjab governor told reporters the assailants had been had been chased into a nearby commercial and shopping area. Police were searching buildings and stopping cars in a massive security sweep, but had lost track of the men's whereabouts.
"We don't know where they are," said Lahore Police chief Habib-ur-Rehman.
It was the first major attack on an international sporting team since Palestinian militants attacked Israeli athletes at the 1972 Olympics in Munich.
The attack highlights Pakistan's seeming inability to defeat militancy spreading inside and outside the country and comes at a time when the United States is putting pressure on the government to do more to fight the Taliban and al Qaeda.
Pakistan's civilian government has lurched into political crisis less than a year since ex-army chief Pervez Musharraf was forced to quit as president, and the country is braced for street agitation by opposition parties in coming days.
"I think this is a deliberate attempt to undermine the government at the time when there is a huge political crisis," respected Lahore-based journalist Ahmed Rashid said.
"WHO WOULD WANT TO INVEST IN PAKISTAN?"
"This is not only an attack on the Sri Lankan team but on Pakistan," said Shuja Rizvi, director of broking at Capital One Equities Ltd. "Who would want to invest then in Pakistan?"
The Karachi stock Exchange benchmark 100-share index fell 1.5 percent, while the rupee lost 0.4 percent against the dollar.
A spokesman for the Sri Lanka High Commission in Islamabad said six players were wounded along with assistant coach Paul Farbrace, a Briton. Most of them were hit by shrapnel.
Star batsman Thilan Samaraweera seemed to be the worst hit, suffering a thigh injury. The other Sri Lankan player admitted to hospital was Tharanga Paranavithana. Sri Lanka immediately canceled the rest of the tour.
Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari condemned the attacks, as Sri Lankan President Mahinda Rajapaksa said he was cutting short a trip to Nepal to return home.
Until this series Pakistan had gone without test cricket for more then a year because of security concerns. In 2002, a bomb exploded in Karachi while the New Zealand cricket team was touring, killing 13 people, including 11 French navy experts.
(Additional reporting by Mubasher Bukhari, Augustine Anthony, Zeeshan Haider, Robert Birsel and Sahar Ahmed in Pakistan and Bryson Hull, Charlie Austin and Ranga Sirilal in Colombo; Writing by Simon Cameron-Moore; Editing by Bill Tarrant and Alex Richardson
The idea that Indian is doing this to embarass pakistan has to be one of the most stupid ignorant comments that I have ever heard,,,,this is what comes from from Pakistan makeing peace with the Taliban at any cost...it rates up there with the senator that was justfieing burying young girls alive because of who they wanted to marry.
