Sri Lanka Cricket Shooting In Pakistan: Imran Khan Explains Terrorists

IN Pakistan , the Sri Lankan cricket team are under fire. In Lahore for a Test against Pakistan, the visitors are being fired on.

Reports tell of 12 gunmen armed with heavy weapons strafing the Sri Lankan team bus with bullets as it drove to the Gadaffi stadium in Lahore.

Kumar Sangakkara, Ajantha Mendis, Thilan Samaraweera, Tharanga Paranavithana and captain Mahela Jayawardena have all suffered superficial injuries.

In all, eight Sri Lankan cricketers are reported wounded in a gun attack:

The team bus came under fire as the players headed to the Gaddafi stadium for the third day of the second Test against Pakistan.

Five police were killed in the attack.

Aussies hit:

THE COACH of the Sri Lankan cricket team, Australian Trevor Bayliss, has sustained minor injuries in an attack by masked gunmen on the squad’s coach, a team official said.

Australian umpires Simon Taufel and Steve Davis were both in the convoy that was fired on, but both were OK, an International Cricket Council spokeswoman said… (H)owever the spokeswoman would not comment on the condition of reserve umpire Ahsan Raza. CNN reported that he was in a critical condition.

The English coach:

Englishman Paul Farbrace, the current Sri Lanka assistant coach (**): “People have talked about grenades, rocket-launchers and all sorts but I have to say I wasn’t aware of too much because I was lying on the floor of the coach and just hoping to god I wasn’t going to be struck.”

The driver:

“It was terrible. The van driver died in front of us. I am lost for words,” stunned cricket umpire Steve Davis said after gunmen turned an upmarket Pakistani square into a battleground.

Australia have not toured Pakistan since 1998 because of fears over the safety of their players.

“They came on rickshaws”:

“There were 12 masked gunmen,” Habib-ur Rehman told reporters, adding that police battled against the assailants for about 25 minutes.

“They appeared to be well-trained terrorists. They came on rickshaws. They were armed with rockets, hand grenades, kalashnikovs.”

Four arrests:

Pakistan police has arrested four persons in connection with the attack on Sri Lankan team in the Model town area here, sources said.

According to the sources, police has also recovered huge cache of weapons from their possessions.

Earlier, Pakistan authorities defused two car bombs and recover a stash of weapons in Lahore, after deadly ambush of Sri Lankan cricket team.

Game tied:

Rockets:

Pakistani officials said about 12 gunmen were involved and grenades and rocket launchers have been recovered.

No return:

Former England cricketer Dominic Cork, who has vowed never to return to Pakistan.

“We left the hotel probably about five minutes before the Sri Lanka team and we arrived at the ground ready to do our commentary for this series.

“We heard two quite loud explosions and then gunfire, but in no way did we believe it was going to be anything to do with us and the cricket team.

“The next thing we knew was the Sri Lanka team were coming to the ground, we witnessed the coach with quite a lot of bullet holes and also players who were quite injured and shocked.

“At one point we saw the medical staff screaming and shouting in a bit of a state, calling for ambulances, it was a shocking experience to be involved in and one that I, as an ex-international cricketer would never believe would ever happen.”

Zaheer Abbas:

Who will come to Pakistan after this incident and today’s incident has disgraced Pakistan cricket,” he added. He said that the teams, which do not want to come here, they would now make this incident a pretext for not visiting Pakistan.

India did it?

“It is not my place to comment on who was behind the incident but obviously Pakistanis are cricket lovers and they would never do that,” former Pakistan Test Cricketer Zaheer Abbas told AKI.

India Blamed For Attack on Sri-Lankan Players

Pakistan on tour - play home games in England?:

Sri Lanka’s cricketers paid a heavy price Tuesday for agreeing to tour a country nobody else was prepared to visit.

They only stepped in after India cancelled a much-anticipated January-February series here due to simmering political tensions between the two countries over the Mumbai terrorist attacks last November.

That cancellation was the third major cricket event called off in Pakistan in the past year, after Australia refused to tour in March and the ICC postponed the elite eight-nation Champions Trophy set for August until 2009.

Eight dead as Pakistan gunmen attack Sri Lankan cricketers

Mumbai:

It was an audacious commando-style attack and, like the tragedy in Mumbai, planned to cause bloody mayhem and grab headlines. Not since the Munich Olympics have sportspeople been specifically targeted.

“I want to say it’s the same pattern, the same terrorists who attacked Mumbai,” Salman Taseer, the governor of central Punjab province, told reporters at the site of the attack, ruling out Indian involvement.

“They are trained criminals. They were not common people. The kind of weaponry they had, the kind of arms they had, the way they attacked … they were not common citizens, they were obviously trained.”

World Cup cancelled:

ICC chief executive Haroon Lorgat admitted there would now be urgent talks about whether to shift World Cup matches away from Pakistan in two years’ time, telling Times Now: “In the next day or two we will have to make some serious decisions, and we will.”

Sri Lankan players’ testimony:

“The bus came under attack as we were driving to the stadium, the gunmen targeted the wheels of the bus first and then the bus,” Jayawardene told Cricinfo. “We all dived to the floor to take cover. About five players have been injured and also Paul Farbrace [a member of the support staff], but most of the injuries appear to be minor at this stage and caused by debris.”

Jayawardene was slightly injured in the foot.

The Sri Lanka wicketkeeper Kumar Sangakkara told Pakistan’s Geo TV: “Many players were injured. The third umpire was also hit by shrapnel. This incident is unfortunate. I don’t regret coming to Pakistan but I regret the incident. I would just like to go back home and be safe with my family. I had shrapnel inside my shoulder, [Sri Lankan bowler] Ajantha [Mendis] had some in his scalp and he also had a thigh injury. We are fine now. We are all out of danger now. I am very happy that I am safe.”

Nadeem Ghauri, the TV umpire, told Geo TV: “When the bus reached Liberty Market, we heard gunshots. We hid under the seats. The driver got shot and died on the spot. The firing continued. The other umpire, Ahsan Raza, was also shot. The police managed to get us to the airport.”

Angus Fraser:

“You question what it’s all about really; you want to play cricket, you want to play sport but you don’t want to put yourself, to use the phrase, in the firing line - as has been the case this morning.”

The hero driver:

Sri Lankan wicketkeeper Kumar Sangakkara praised his team’s bus driver. He said:

“Suddenly everyone just said hit the deck, quick, someone’s shooting. And we just hit the floor of the bus and stayed there and we heard the bullets hitting the bus and a few explosions.

“But, you know, we had an amazing driver who just kept driving the bus straight through all of that to the ground and that’s probably what saved us.”

All cricketers are well.

Black arm bands in India-Kiwi match:

The New Zealand and Indian teams donned black arm bands midway through their One-day match on Tuesday as a mark of respect for the Sri Lankan cricketers wounded in Pakistan.

Imran Khan responds to murders in Lahore:

“These are not the normal terrorists who in desperation and anger are reacting against Pakistan forces [in the tribal areas].

“This was not a normal terrorist attack. This was to destablise the Pakistan economy and the country.”

Not normal terrorist, then…

Anorak

Posted: 3rd, March 2009 | In: Key Posts, Media Comments (14) | Follow the Comments on our RSS feed: RSS 2.0 | TrackBack | Permalink