Pakistan: 2 Sri Lankan cricket players wounded
A dozen masked gunmen armed with rifles and rocket launchers attacked vehicles carrying members of Sri Lanka's national cricket team in east Pakistan on 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 which 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 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 but that the injuries did not appear life threatening.
A Sri Lankan foreign ministry official confirmed that two players — Thilan Samaraweera and Tharanga Paranavitana — were hospitalized. He said three more players were slightly injured and that the head coach, Australian Trevor Bayliss, also sustained minor injuries. The official spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak to the media.
Rehman said 12 masked gunmen participated in the attack near Gaddafi Stadium where the Sri Lankan team was heading to play Pakistan in a test match.
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 several of its cultural arenas have been the focus of small explosions. 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 E.U. 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.
A driver of one of the vehicles taking the Sri Lankan players to the stadium told Pakistan's private Express news channel that he saw a man firing a rocket toward their van and then some one hurled a grenade, but the weapons missed their vehicle.
The driver said later he heard gunshots and bullet started hitting their van. He said he managed to take the van to the stadium and saw two of the Sri Lankan players were bleeding.
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