Adil Najam
In this still-developing story, unknown gunmen opened fire on the Sri Lankan cricket team bus near Gaddafi Stadium, Lahore leaving several security officials dead and several Sri Lankan cricketers were rushed to the hospital.
The News is reporting at least 5 security officials dead while The Times reports that as many as 8 Sri Lankan crickets might have been injured. However, latest reports point out that the injuries to the players are minor, although the shock is deep.
According to an earlier report from the Associated Press:
LAHORE, Pakistan (AP) — A dozen masked gunmen armed with rifles and rocket launchers attacked a vehicle carrying members of Sri Lanka’s national cricket team Tuesday, wounding at least two players and killing five police officers, officials said.
The attack in Lahore came at a time of unrest in both Pakistan and Sri Lanka, both of whom are trying to defeat insurgencies. It was unclear who was behind the assault, but it appeared to have been carefully coordinated. City police chief Haji Habibur Rehman said five policemen died in the shooting and that two players were wounded. A Pakistan Cricket Board security official had earlier said eight players were wounded.
“It was a terrorist attack and the terrorists used rocket launchers, hand grenades and other weapons,” Rehman said, adding that the police were hunting down the attackers who managed to flee. “Our police sacrificed their lives to protect the Sri Lankan team.”
He said one wounded player was hit in the leg while the other received a bullet in the chest.
Sri Lankan team manager Brendon Kruppu said the team’s batsman, Kumar Sangakkara, was among those injured near Gaddafi Stadium ahead of a game. Rehman said 12 masked gunmen participated in the attack. Footage from the scene Tuesday showed the team’s white van with its front window shattered as security officials tried to gain control of the scene in an intersection.
Security concerns have plagued Pakistan for years and some foreign sports teams have refused to play here.Most of the violence in Pakistan occurs in its northwest regions bordering Afghanistan, where Taliban and al-Qaida militants have established strongholds. Lahore has not been immune from militant violence however, and at least one attack in recent months in the northwest has occurred next to a sports stadium. Sri Lanka appeared on the brink of crushing the Tamil Tiger rebels after more than a quarter century of civil war.
In recent months, government forces have pushed the guerrillas out of much of the de facto state they controlled in the north of the Indian Ocean island nation and trapped them in a small patch of land along the coast. The rebels, who are fighting for an independent state for Sri Lanka’s Tamil minority, are listed as a terror group by the U.S. and EU and are routinely blamed for suicide bombings and other attacks targeting civilians.
The rebels rarely launch attacks outside Sri Lanka, though their most prominent attack — the assassination of former Indian Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi by a female suicide bomber — took place at an election rally in India in 1991.
As reader Eidee Man wrote in his comment elsewhere on thsi blog (in alerting us to this news): “Everything is officially going to hell.”
The bickering and finger pointing in the comments between Indians and Paksitanis is rather disgusting. Specially for an incidence that is actually not between these two countries.
My hope is that this just reflects the pent up frustrations of people in both countries who are fed p of teh failures and violence around them. My fear is that it is more than that and is a result of years after years of governments and media in both countries teaching people to hate the others.
Irony is that the violent extremists, of whatever religion and flavor, who are the common enemy of both are the ones who benefit from this.
@Hassan
A relief to find a sensible voice in this cacophony. I stopped posting to this very dear site of mine because of the increasing stridency of the language used. If this is the standard here, I can well believe that language in other fora might be considered a sufficient casus belli.
For both good people from Pakistan and from India: there are such deep and dreadful problems going on at this moment all over South Asia that none of us should have the temerity to sit in judgement over the others. From bloody mutiny and massacre in Dhaka to assault on our young ones in Bengaluru to murder in Mumbai to finally this crowning outrage, this foul act against hospitality and against those who should have been our honoured guests, we have done more than enough for the rest of the world to shrink from us.
Please, please, stop this mutual abuse and let us each set our own houses in order, not in isolation from our friends across the border, but with sympathy and ready cooperation, not in a spirit of scoring debating points, nor in a spirit of patronising condescension. We aren’t any of us in such a position that we can afford to be so high and mighty with each other.
The more I read many of the posts here, the more I can understand how, ultimately, any human is capable of committing the most heinous act, if the circumstances are ‘right’. Many posting here ought to read Manto’s “Mootri”. It shows how despicable things were coming up to ’47. The posts here show how we have regressed and degnerated even from the “Mootri”, in to the ….
Ok, this is most probably definatley an inside job. Take a look at this account of events here:
http://www.infowars.com/pakistan-cricket-attack-%e2%80%9cinside-job%e2%80%9d-theory-goes-viral/
I’m sure intelligence agencies were involved with this!
“You are also right in feeling slighted and frustrated by his arguments. maybe he made those arguments because he felt equally slighted and frustrated by the arguments being made by Indians here that seem to (even if they are not meant to) be made merely as cheap digs on a traditional