Wednesday Mar 04, 2009
Stephen Brenkley, INDEPENDENT, NZ HERALD STAFF
AP, AGENCIES
A Pakistani minister has
blamed India for the deadly terrorist attack which killed several police officers and a
civilian, and wounded members of the Sri Lankan cricket team in Lahore today.
A dozen men attacked Sri Lanka's cricket team with
rifles,
grenades and
rocket launchers ahead of a
match,
wounding seven players and a coach from Britain in a
brazen assault on South Asia's
beloved sport. An assistant coach was also
wounded, but the players' and coach's injuries were
not believed to be life-threatening.
The Reuters news agency reports that Pakistani
state shipping minister Sardar Nabil Ahmed Gabol has
accused India of
conspiring to
defame Pakistan internationally. He is reported as saying that the
gunmen responsible for the attack entered Pakistan across the Indian border.
The
assailants ambushed the
convoy carrying the
squad and
match officials at a traffic circle close to the main sports stadium in the eastern city of Lahore,
triggering a 15-minute gunbattle with police
guarding the vehicles.

None of the
attackers were killed or captured at the
scene, city police chief Haji Habibur Rehman said.
Authorities did not
speculate on the
identities of the attackers or their
motives.
The attack
reinforced perceptions that nuclear-armed Pakistan is
veering out of control and will
end any hopes of international cricket teams - or any sports teams - playing in the country for months, if not years. Even before the
incident, most cricket teams choose not to tour the country because
of security concerns. The attack came three months after the Mumbai terror attacks, which were
allegedly carried out by Pakistan
militants.
Two Sri Lankan players - Thilan Samaraweera and Tharanga Paranavitana - were being
treated for injuries in hospital but were
astable, said Chamara Ranavira, a spokesman for the Sri Lankan High Commission. Team captain Mahela Jayawardene, Kumar Sangakkara, Ajantha Mendis, Suranka Lakmal and Chaminda Vaas had minor injuries, the Sri Lankan Cricket Board said. Ranavira said British assistant coach Paul Farbrace also
sustained minor injuries. Australian head coach Trevor Bayliss was
not wounded, Sri Lanka's Foreign Ministry said,
refuting earlier reports he had
minor wounds.
Veteran batsman Sangakkara told Sri Lankan radio station Yes-FM that "all the players are completely out of danger."
Authorities cancelled the
test match and the Lahore governor said the team was flying home. Sri Lankan President Mahinda Rajapaksa
condemned the attack and
ordered his foreign minister to immediately travel to Pakistan to help assist in the team's
ensure they are safe.
TV
footage of the attack showed
gunmen with backpacks - apparently the attackers -
firing at the
convoy as they
retreated from the
scene, with several damaged vehicles and a
lone,
unexploded grenade lying on the ground. Other video showed the bodies of three people
crumpled on the ground.
"It is a terrible incident and I am
lost for words," said Steve Davis, an Australian who was
umpiring the match. Nadeem Ghauri, a Pakistani
umpire who witnessed the attack, said the
umpires were behind a bus of Sri Lankan players when suddenly they heard gunshots. "The firing started at about 8:40 and it continued for 15 minutes," he said, adding "our driver was hit, and he was injured."
Lahore police chief Rehman said officers were
hunting down the attackers who managed to
flee. "Our police
sacrificed their lives to protect the Sri Lankan team." Three hours after the attack, at least eight Sri Lankan players and team officials left the Gadaffi stadium in Lahore on a Pakistani army helicopter that took off from the
pitch. It was not immediately clear where the
chopper was
heading. Haider Ashraf, a senior police official, said six policemen and a
civilian died in the attack. It was unclear whether the civilian was a passer-by or someone traveling in the
convoy.
Sri Lanka had agreed to this tour - allowing Pakistan to
host its first
test matches in 14 months - only after India and Australia
postponed scheduled trips. Sri Lankan Foreign Secretary Palitha Kohona said little could be done to stop such an attack.
"I think the Pakistani authorities have provided
adequate security but as we know from experience ... there is never enough security to
counter a well organized and
determinedterrorist group."
The International Cricket Board quickly moved to
condemn the attack. "We note with
dismay and regret the events of this morning in Lahore and we
condemn this attack
without reservation," ICC chief executive Haroon Lorgat said in a statement. "It is a
source of great sadness that there have been a number of
fatalities in this attack and it is also very upsetting for the wider cricket family that some of the Sri Lanka players and one match official have been injured in this attack."
Pakistan is battling a
ferocious insurgency by Islamist militants with links to al-Qaida who have
staged high-profile attacks on
civilian targets before.
One
militant group likely to
fall under particular suspicion is Lashkar-e-Taiba, the
network blamed for the Mumbai terror attacks. The group has been targeted by Pakistani authorities since then and its stronghold is in eastern Pakistan.
The
nature of the attack - coordinated, using multiple gunmen armed with explosives - is
reminiscent of the Mumbai
strikes in November that
raised tensions between Pakistan and India.
In the past, India and Pakistan have
blamed each other for attacks on their
territories. Any
allegations like that will
trigger fresh
tensions between the countries, which are already dangerously
high. The Indian government
refused permission for the national cricket team to tour Pakistan last month.
Authorities will also consider possible links to Sri Lanka's Tamil Tiger
separatist rebels who are being badly hit in a
military offensive at home, though Sri Lankan military spokesman Brig. Udaya Nanayakkara says authorities there did not believe the group was responsible.
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.
The Tamil Tigers, who are fighting for an independent
state for Sri Lanka's Tamil
minority,
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.
Most of the violence in Pakistan occurs in its northwest regions bordering Afghanistan, where Taleban and al-Qaida
militants have
established strongholds. Lahore has
not been immune from militant violence, however.
Cricket changed forever yesterday. The attack on Sri Lanka's team in the centre of Lahore went far beyond Pakistan in particular and the Asian Subcontinent in general. Its thunderous effects could be felt everywhere the sport is played.
The game cannot and will not be played in Pakistan for the
foreseeable future, a period that could last five years or 15 years. New Zealand this morning
called off their tour there
scheduled for December, but there are also serious doubts about playing the game in India and nothing said by
officials with cash registers in their eyes could
alter that.
The Indian Premier League, due to start next month with the world's best cricketers taking part, is
under threat, partly because players may be unwilling to travel, partly because the Indian government
went some way yesterday to conceding that it could not guarantee security. England's enlisted players were considering last night what to do. Those in the West Indies were still
stunned by what had taken place.
Beyond that, the
fate of the 2011 World Cup being planned in four countries of the Subcontinent - India, Pakistan, Sri Lanka and Bangladesh - is at best uncertain. Although officials from the International Cricket Council
hedged their bets, Pakistan will clearly not be a
venue. But the feeling will
persist, with memories still fresh of the terrorist
atrocity in Mumbai last November, that safety cannot be guaranteed anywhere.
The World Twenty20
is scheduled to take place in England this summer and the security restrictions that will be necessary with 12 teams taking part will make it
a logistical nightmare. The murderers of Lahore ensured that no game anywhere will be easy to arrange or comfortably attended.
In the Caribbean, England's cricketers about to leave Barbados for Trinidad, attempted to
grasp the enormity of what had
taken place. A few
yards from the hotel they were about to leave in Bridgetown, gentle waters lapped a sun-kissed beach. It was a scene from paradise while they were hearing about a hell on earth.
Stuart Broad, the team's
richly promising fast bowler, was simply relieved to hear that his father Chris was safe. As the match referee in the test series between Pakistan and Sri Lanka, Broad Senior had been travelling in a car behind the Sri Lankan team coach. His driver was killed but he was, it was reported, taken to safety unharmed with other officials by a nearby policeman as bullets rained around.
There remained a
will to play cricket. As David Morgan, the Welsh president of the ICC, said: "The world is a dangerous place but cricket must
go on, it will
go on. It is a great game which is a solace to many people." But never again can the safety of cricketers anywhere cricket is played be taken for granted
If the
audacious ambush, as the players made their way to the Gaddafi Stadium for a test match,
sought attention it succeeded brilliantly. This has been a catastrophe waiting to happen. During a decade, perhaps more, of terrorist
interventions in countries where cricket is played the official line has remained
chillingly standard: that players have never been
targets and never would be the
targets.
But there was always the uncomfortable feeling that this would
alter, that sooner or later somebody with weapons and a
cause would realise what cricketers could do for it. The comparisons with the attack on the Israeli team by extremists at the Munich Olympic Games in 1972 were made immediately. But then one particular team was deliberately targeted, in Lahore it was Sri Lanka but it could in truth have been any team. In the event no players or officials were killed yesterday but two civilians and six policeman.
Two of the Sri Lanka team were more badly injured than the others, the batsmen Thilan Samaraweera and Tharanga Paranavitana who were later released from hospital. The
juxtaposition of sport and life was brought home by the involvement of Samaraweera. He had scored
double centuries in both the first test match, in Karachi, and the second in Lahore, the third day of which was due to take place yesterday. That glittering achievement was put into perspective by the horror of the journey to the stadium.
There were narrow escapes by men who came for a game and saw bloodshed. Chris Broad was in a car behind the Sri Lankan team bus. His driver was shot dead as the bus carrying the players sped away while under fire.
Morgan and the ICC chief executive Haroon Lorgat will come under immense pressure to announce that Pakistan will not be part of the World Cup plans. It was
conceded at the press conference they gave in London that their security advice on Pakistan had changed. The fact was that the country was
deemed by experts to be safer under the military government of Pervez Musharraf which had been in power for a decade until last year when it was replaced by a civilian
administration.
There
is bound to be a struggle within the ICC. There were already signs yesterday that Pakistan will not want to become a
pariah but they will soon have to
recognise that no other country will play there.
Morgan tried to
dowse some of the flames by
mentioning the terrorist attacks on London in 2005 which happened on the day England were playing Australia in a
one-day international in Leeds.
But he and Lorgat had no option but to
concede that the
landscape has now
changed irrevocably. As they spoke their shock at the turn of events was obvious. They had been dragged from the comfort zone they had occupied previously - a place established on the fact that
hitherto there had been no direct attacks on cricketers.
The shock at what had happened was no better
summed up than by Graeme Smith, the captain of South Africa, whose team had been beaten by Australia in the first test match of the series between the countries the previous day. "The word 'tragedy' is often used to describe a setback on a sporting field but this is a real tragedy," he said. "It is a tragedy for all the people of Pakistan and Sri Lanka, it is a tragedy for cricket and it is a tragedy for all
decent people.
"There is a tremendous brotherhood between players around the world and at this moment the South African team extends its sympathy to all those who have been affected by this terrible event. We are hurting after our defeat yesterday but this puts into perspective what real suffering is. Our thoughts are with the players and we hope that they arrive home safely to their families."
The West Indies Cricket Board president, Julian Hunte, also
articulated the global
outrage. "All
test-playing nations must
ensure that security is priority number one, in our area of the world as well," he said. "Before, it was felt that cricketers were not being targeted regardless of what was going on in Pakistan. There was a level of comfort. This now
blows that away and it means cricketers are being seen as
targets. It is a matter we cannot ignore, and we must ensure the safety of players and everyone else involved in this beautiful game."
It was always likely that the
IPL would be an unwelcome
spectre. So it
proved. Hardly had the Sri Lankan team been airlifted from the stadium than the IPL's commissioner, Lalit Modi said his competition would still be
taking place. "The IPL will
go ahead as planned and I don't
visualise any impact on it," Modi said on NDTV. "There are a few dates which will change due to the general elections and a few of the games will be shifted around. But we will get under way on 10 April."
If this
almost beggared belief considering what had happened, the Indian government saw matters differently. While Modi stipulated that several security measures had already been put in place following the Mumbai terrorist attacks, which caused England briefly to abandon their Indian tour late last year, and that they had envisaged every conceivable mode of attack, the government's home minister
called for the
IPL to be
abandoned.
Any difficulties have been
compounded by the
calling of elections in India with
polling coinciding with the
IPL. The country's home minister Palaniappan Chidambaram said: "I have requested the home secretary to
get in touch with the
IPL organisers and discuss
rescheduling the dates. It will be difficult to provide
adequate paramilitary forces for election purposes and for the
IPL.
"I'm not worried about my ability to provide security. I can. But since it
coincides with the elections, I don't want to be stretched and I don't want my forces to be strained."
In those circumstances it is impossible to imagine that even a competition as lucrative as the
IPL could proceed as planned, or that England's recruited players will wish to take part. But with the
IPL anything is possible.
The ICC will be under the closest
scrutiny now. With Lorgat
at the helm they will
endeavour to act as a proper governing body.
That could be seen by his
urging Pakistan to seek
neutral venues to play matches, with England
well to the fore as the venue. But as
the dust settles slightly with the murderers still
at large, Lorgat will see that it is not simply about Pakistan. It is about cricket everywhere.
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