Attack on Sri Lankan cricket team shocks S. Asia

March 4, 2009 at 12:00a.m.

Washington Post

NEW DELHI, India — Gunmen fired rockets and hurled grenades at a Sri Lankan cricket team’s bus in the Pakistani city of Lahore on Tuesday in an attack that horrified cricket-obsessed South Asia.

Seven players, a Pakistani umpire and a coach from Britain were wounded, none with life-threatening injuries, but six policemen and a driver in the convoy died.

Two civilians in the area also were killed.

The police officers were escorting the Sri Lankan team to the 60,000-seat Gaddafi stadium at the time of the assault, which Pakistani police said was carried out as the team bus slowed at a traffic circle.

Pakistani news channels showed footage of gunmen with backpacks and rifles running through the streets and firing at various vehicles.

“The attackers seemed to be well-trained terrorists, and in a well-coordinated plan, they assaulted the Sri Lankan team bus from three sides,” Lahore police Chief Habib-ur Rehman told journalists.

Four cricket players were slightly wounded by shrapnel, one had a hip wound and one had a superficial injury, police said.

Officers exchanged gunfire with the attackers for about 30 minutes, but none of the assailants was killed or captured at the scene.

“This was an organized attack ... You cannot stop these things anywhere in the world,” Salmaan Taseer, the Pakistani governor of Punjab, told reporters. “They are trying to damage Pakistan. But it could have been far worse. Our security was there, and they got the brunt of it.”

Sri Lankan President Mahinda Rajapaksa condemned the attack and called for the country’s players to return home. Pakistani authorities vowed to find the assailants, who managed to slip away from police.

The brazen daylight attack could close off yet another avenue for regional camaraderie in South Asia, which has been plagued by violence from a plethora of militant groups whose reach tends to cross national boundaries. The assailants’ selected target — a foreign cricket team — strikes deep into the psyche of many South Asians, whose devotion to the sport has until now placed it beyond the reach of political and religious fissures. Cricket is played on any available patch of dirt, swath of grass or stretch of concrete sidewalk in this vast region, from the crowded slums of Bangladesh’s capital to the snow-capped mountains of Kashmir.

Sri Lanka’s cricket team had agreed to play in Pakistan in part to rescue Pakistan’s cricket council after India pulled out of a tournament the council was hosting. India dropped out in response to the Nov. 26 attacks in Mumbai that killed 170 people. The attack has been linked to Pakistan. Now, some observers say, Sri Lanka has become a victim of its own good will.

Pakistan was scheduled to host the cricket World Cup in 2011, along with India and Sri Lanka. But the sport’s governing body, the International Cricket Council, had earlier asked organizers to plan alternate venues because of the heightened security risk in Pakistan.