Gunmen attacked Sri Lanka’s cricket team in a gun and grenade assault in Lahore yesterday morning that killed eight people and wounded seven members of the squad.
It was the first major attack on an international sporting team since Palestinian militants attacked Israeli athletes at the 1972 Olympics in Munich. Sri Lanka immediately canceled the rest of the tour.
The unidentified gunmen 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.
The attack was launched as the team bus slowed for a traffic circle about 100m from the stadium, Lahore Police chief Habib-ur-Rehman said, triggering a 15-minute gunbattle with police guarding the vehicles. Most of the dead were policemen.
“The plan was apparently to kill the Sri Lankan team but the police came in the way and forced the attackers to run away,” Rehman said.
Witnesses saw gunmen with rifles and backpacks running through the streets and firing on people and vehicles around the stadium.
“I saw them from the window of my office firing at the police escort first. When the police dispersed after the shooting, they started firing at the bus of the Sri Lankan team,” Mohammad Luqman said.
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 said by telephone from the stadium, before being evacuated by helicopter along with the rest of the team, including the wounded.
The driver of the team bus said one attacker threw a grenade under the bus but it failed to detonate. The driver of a second bus carrying the Australian umpires was killed.
A spokesman for the Sri Lanka High Commission in Islamabad said most of the injured — six players and assistant coach Paul Farbrace — had been hit by shrapnel.
Star batsman Thilan Samaraweera suffered a thigh injury and teammate Tharanga Paranavithana was hit in the chest. Both were hospitalized in stable condition.
The team was scheduled to return to Colombo yesterday aboard a specially chartered plane.
The Sri Lankan team had been invited to play in Pakistan after the Indian team pulled out in the wake of last November’s terror attack in Mumbai, which New Dehli blamed on Pakistan-trained militants.
“One thing I want to say, it’s the same pattern, the same terrorists who attacked Mumbai,” Punjab Governor Salman Taseer said.
But a Pakistani minister pointed the finger at India.
“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 private Geo television. “This was a conspiracy to defame Pakistan.”
Taser said the assailants had been chased into a nearby commercial and shopping area but police had lost track of the men.
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.
Pakistan’s cricket team escaped the attack because they left their hotel five minutes late, coach Intikhab Alam said: “We usually leave the hotel early on the first day because of the toss and on the second and third day we leave the hotel a bit late, so captain Younus Khan decided to leave at 8:35 but the Sri Lankan team left five minutes before us.”
RSS