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.”
@Pak Watcher
Did you ever encounter the phrase ‘non sequitur’ any time during your extended education (it obviously couldn’t have been any other kind)?
I find it bizarre that you should pick up a thread on “Sri Lankan Cricketers Threatened by Gunmen” to express your views, third hand, about Pakistan and Pakistanis.
And that too on a site called Pakistaniat. What is this, have you discovered irony?
If you really concur with Vir Sanghvi’s pedestrian rehash of MJ Akbar’s original, why bother to spend so much time here?
And the next time it is appropriate to display learning through quoting a journalist quoting another journalist, just post the URL. These work the same no matter how different the people using them.
Interesting observations from PakWatcher.
Although I guess propagandists never realize that their rants can sound a little selective to anyone who reads newspapers.
I guess Gujrat never happened in your India!
But you are right, we are NOT the same. Which is why we wanted and are very happy to have a Pakistan that is not India. With all the problems we have today, I would not stand for a minute the thought of having that one reality be different.
Things are not going well for Pakistan right now. And I do not expect anything except jeers and attempts to make them worse by Indians. But, boy, am I glad that Pakistan is not India.
Be happy in your India, dear friend and please please please stop interfering in our affairs. Let us be. If you don’t have it your heart to wish good things for your neighbors, please don’t make things worse. Just spare us your propaganda.
P.S… By the way, for someone who is so keen on India and so hateful of Pakistan, you seem to spend an awful lot of time thinking about Pakistan. Nice psychiatric case here!
Are India and Pakistan the same people ?
The obvious answer is Yes, until you look at the history of these countries in last 60 years. Yes we share more or less same genetics and have a shared history. There is so much common but the way these two people and countries have differed and diverged in last 60 years is equally remarkable.
Here Mr Vir Sangvi wrote a very interesting opinion in hindustantimes.
The same people ? Surely Not.
Few things annoy me as much as the claim often advanced by well-meaning but woolly- headed (and usually Punjabi) liberals to the effect that when it comes to India and Pakistan, “We
@ Gorki
Oh, you’re right as usual, but sometimes the sublime statesmanship of a Nehru or a Jinnah is lost on warts; warts don’t get it. Sometimes, the situation need a different approach from your humanism or Watan Aziz’s patrician disdain. Sometimes it needs a low-bred pleb like me to call things as they are, to clean up warts and pustules. And I’m a Sudra, a cleaner-up of messes; that’s what I was born to do, dear Doc.
I’m a guest here, like you; they made us at home. It’s nice to be able to repay the courtesy in some humble way.
I didn’t realise warts squashed with such a lovely squishy sound.
@ Bonobashi, Watan Aziz and Bloody Civilian,
I read your responses and see that you three have noticed that petty little attention seeker, Arjun-2.
Personally I believe that such pitiful creatures are best ignored and do not deserve the dignity of a response.
Fortunately most people on the ATP can see through his miserable ruse but perhaps he got a little under the skin of Watan Aziz.
I do not blame Watan Aziz for this, and as he pointed out, internet has provided all of us with an open forum which can unfortunately show