IN THE early morning sunshine over Pakistan’s cultural capital, Lahore, the Sri Lankan cricket team’s coach glided out of one of the city’s most luxurious hotels, the Pearl Continental, and edged into the morning traffic. The squad were to take to the field of Lahore’s Gadafy stadium, one of the subcontinent’s cauldrons of cricket, in the third day of their Test match against Pakistan.
Winding through, the coach stopped at the junction of Liberty roundabout, a landmark noted for its sculptured pond. Mohammad Khalil, driver of the bus carrying the Sri Lankan team, remembered thinking how “quiet the roads were”. But at 8.30am the city’s roar was replaced by a deadlier boom: that of a rocket launcher.
“As we approached the city’s Liberty Roundabout, I slowed down. Just then what seemed to be a rocket was fired at my coach, but it missed and I think flew over the top of the vehicle,” said Mohammad Khalil.
“Almost immediately afterwards a person ran in front of the bus and threw a grenade in our direction. But it rolled underneath the coach and did not seem to cause that much damage . . . I was shocked and stunned.”
What had begun as a day of cricket turned into half an hour of terror. The first explosion had in fact missed the cricket convoy by 20ft. From the shade of the trees that line the main boulevard in eastern Lahore a dozen men came armed with rockets and guns in their hands.
Raking bullets into the side of the coach carrying the Sri Lankan cricket team, a dozen young men were intent on causing bloody mayhem in the upmarket avenues of the city. The first three gunmen on the scene, captured by television cameras, calmly opened fire with AK-47s on the coach – mowing down Pakistani police.
They then turned their attention to the bus, coolly aiming first at the tyres, then the chassis before shattering windows. The players’ coach quickly filled with shards of glass and pools of blood.
Injured players hit the floor and there were cries of “Go! Go!” as the coach zigzagged its way through the ambush. “We all dived to the floor to take cover,” said Sri Lanka’s team captain, Mahela Jayawardene.
What saved the lives of the test cricketers and umpires was the lightning reflexes of Khalil, who kept his foot on the gas as bullets ripped into the vehicle and explosions filled the air.
“[The rocket] missed us and hit an electric pole, after which all hell broke loose,” he said. “All of us were taken aback . . . I did not stop and kept moving.” The driver of a bus following behind, carrying the Australian umpires, was killed.
The attack was an audacious, commando-style guerrilla operation. The gunmen, wearing backpacks, believed to be full of grenades, split into pairs and moved swiftly to take positions at the roundabout.
The rocket that narrowly missed the oncoming Sri Lankan bus had slammed into a parade of shops – reducing one shopfront to a cinder. Malls around the roundabout were punctured by high-calibre bullets that apparently missed their targets.
The militants continued shooting for another 30 minutes – with little resistance from local police. Seven people, including six police, were killed.
The wounded included seven players, an umpire and an assistant coach. The Sri Lankan team saw its new star batsman, Tharanga Paranavitana, rushed to hospital to have a bullet removed from his chest. The bowler Ajantha Mendis had surgeons pick shrapnel from his torso and vice-captain Kumar Sangakkara saw his thigh riddled with shards of metal and glass.
Sangakkara was stoic in the face of the terror. “I don’t regret coming to play cricket and that is what all of us have been doing. That is what we have done all our lives. That is our profession . . . I regret what has happened and the situation that we have gone through. All we want is to go back home to our families and get back home and be safe. That is all I can think now,” he said.
There were tales of individual heroism. Chris Broad, an English match referee who was supposed to be officiating the Test, dived on top of another local umpire to save his life. Broad, the father of England fast-bowler Stuart, was one of several officials and umpires travelling in a minibus directly behind the Sri Lankan vehicle. He leapt upon Ehsan Raza, a local umpire, in an effort to save him from the hail of gunfire. Raza, who was shot in the back, was said to be in a critical condition in hospital.
Police arrested four men connected to the assault but the dozen militants simply dropped their weapons and appeared to melt away into the crowds. TV footage of the attack showed gunmen with backpacks firing as they retreated from the scene.
It took police an hour to arrive on the scene and much of the evidence appeared to have been carted away by locals. An abandoned car was found with a stash containing three Kalasknikovs, 12 grenades, a pistol and remote-control bombs was found in a nearby park in Lahore.
Several damaged vehicles were left behind as well as a lone, unexploded grenade. The bodies of three people lay crumpled on the ground. Associated Press reported police handling what looked like two suicide jackets. Officers also recovered two backpacks, as well as walkie-talkies.
Last night Lahore's police were searching buildings and stopping cars in a massive security sweep, but admitted they had lost track of the gunmen. – ( Guardian service)
Attack bears hallmarks of group behind Mumbai assault
THE ATTACK on the Sri Lankan cricket team in Pakistan’s cultural capital, Lahore, bears all the hallmarks of the terrorists behind the Mumbai offensive: the banned Lashkar-e-Taiba.
Twelve men carrying machine guns leapt out of rickshaws, carrying rocket launchers and wearing backpacks. They proceeded to spray bullets into the convoy, which was en route to the city’s Gadafy stadium. It was an audacious attack and, like the tragedy in Mumbai, planned to cause mayhem and grab headlines. Not since the Munich Olympics have sportspeople been specifically targeted.
Lashkar-e-Taiba is a hardline Islamist organisation which was founded in 1986 as a jihadi group aimed at bombing the Soviets out of Afghanistan. Following its success, Pakistan’s army armed and sheltered the outfit, redirecting it to target the Indian army in the disputed region of Kashmir. It was there it developed its trademark “fidayeen” suicide squads.
Western intelligence agencies have warned that Lashkar has global ambitions. The US became alarmed when a Lashkar leader turned up in Baghdad in 2004.
After the Mumbai attack, the computer belonging to Lashkar’s communications chief’s computer revealed a document that listed more than 320 cities on a worldwide hit list.
Although Pakistan’s government has cracked down on Lashkar and arrested some of its leaders, the group continues to run hospitals, schools, seminaries, newspapers and charity organisations throughout Pakistan.
– Randeep Ramesh