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Among the players injured in the attack at the busy Liberty Chowk traffic roundabout, located less than a kilometre from the Gaddafi Stadium at 9 am, were captain Mahela Jayawardene, star wicket-keeper batsman Kumar Sangakkara, mystery spinner Ajantha Mendis, Thilan Samaraweera and Tharanga Paranavitana.
While Samaraweera and Paranavitana received bullet wounds, the others besides the head coach Trevor Bayliss sustained minor injuries, PCB officials were quoted by Dawn news channel as saying.
Lahore police chief Habibur Rehman said two Sri Lankan cricketers were hit by bullets, one in the chest and another in the leg but did not identify them.
Both players were rushed to the military hospital, he said.
Seven persons, including five policemen who were escorting the team, were killed and several others, including policemen and cricket officials, were injured in the exchange of fire that lasted for about half an hour.
Reports said reserve umpire Ahsan Raza was seriously injured and had been operated on in a local hospital.
The driver of the bus carrying the cricketers told reporters that the terrorists shot at his vehicle from all sides. A rocket fired from behind missed bus and hit an electric pylon, he said.
The driver said he had seen a tall and bearded terrorist wearing a shalwar kameez emerge from a white car and open fire at his bus. Another terrorist lobbed a grenade that passed under the bus, he said.
"People started shouting in the bus and the players said 'Go, go'. I drove the bus at high speed to the stadium. I then saw a Sri Lankan player was hit in the leg by a bullet. We called an ambulance and put him in it," said the driver, who did not give his name.
Police chief Rehman said the attackers were armed with rocket launchers, grenades and Kalashnikovs and had come to the spot in a rickshaw and several cars.
Security forces cordoned off the area immediately after the attack and launched a search for the gunmen. Reports said the gunmen had tried to snatch a car in a nearby market as they fled from Liberty Chowk.
Two civilians were also killed in the attack which could raise question mark over the future of Pakistan as an international cricket venue.
Hours after the ambush, authorities defused two car bombs before they could explode and recovered a stash of weapons.
The players, who were air lifted by helicopter from the cricket ground to a safer place, are likely to fly home this evening in a special flight, sources said.
The Pakistani team was still in its hotel at the time of the incident. Officials immediately took steps to prevent it leaving the hotel.
The Sri Lankan team had come to Pakistan after several other teams, including India, refused to tour the country because of security concerns.
President Asif Ali Zardari and Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani condemned the terrorist attack on the Sri Lankan team.
Zardari asked authorities to immediately investigate the incident to identify perpetrators and expose their motives.
Gilani said the objective of the attack was to bring a "bad name to Pakistan". He directed provincial authorities to immediately beef up security and to submit a report.
Condemning the "cowardly terrorist attack," Sri Lankan President Mahinda Rajapaksa in a message from Nepal said: "The Sri Lankan players had gone to Pakistan as ambassadors of goodwill". He instructed immediate action to bring back all members of the team and ensure their safety and security.
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hiiiiiiiiiii
It is an inhuman heinous activity that caused the life of innocents. Until and unless Pakistan focus to address the terrorism rather than blaming others, it is not going to bring any remedy in future rather than aggregating terrorism.Who can mediate or intercede for the peace and harmony for our nation. I believe none other than GOD(creator) has to intervene the life of these terrorists. I long to see a peace and harmonious in midst of us. I don't know when it is going to fulfill our dream in this horrific world.
the driver drove the vehile like a fast bowler and saved all the sports person ,this incident does not require third umpire, the terroist should be out of the world,this is a clear incident of security laps and fear of life for the official itself ,world show their anger, and protest this act hope the govt find the culprits and punish them on the same ground.
it is not just cricket, pakistan doesn't appear to be a safe place at all, for any thing. it is better that india sever all ties to pakistan and completely fence the border with pakistan. it only does damage to india to have any kind of ties with pakistan. let pakistan deal with its own creation. with such kinds of unstable government and society, who is going to invest in that country. i feel sad for the people of pakistan. may god be with you all. insha-allah.
Pakistan is a country of Jihadis and pakistani leaders do not really need to look for excuses rather they should dismantle the terror mechanism. But they do not want to do that as it earns them foreign currency in the name of fighting "self produced" terror?
For years the situation in Pakistan has been getting worse. Terrorists have been busy building up their strength with the help of few establishments. Now the chickens have come home to roost. Having said this, India should also watch out and take timely action with their own home grown rouge elements, irrespective of their religion, to avoid Pakistani experience. If India does not act now with organisations like SIMI,VHP,RSS and a lot of other such groups then the future of India will be as oblique as it is of Pak today.
This could be the high level of conspiracy by Pakistani's Agencies to divert the attention from Pakistan as the perpetrator of the terrorism to that of a Victim of the Terrorism.
R.I.P. Pakistani Cricket.
Who knows? The whole drama might have been stage managed by ISI with the help of their new alliance with the Taliban in SWAT area to drive a wedge between India and Srilanka. Pakistan might cite india's displeasure with Srilanka for agreeing to participate in this match that was spurned by India. Pakistan is the breeding ground for international terrorism and the world community should realize that Pakistan is not only a menace for India but for the whole non Islamic countries. The new government that will come to power in India should deal with this issue more aggressively.
The most worrying fact which emerges is that the Taliban has arrived.And practically knocking at our door.And what are we doing about it??Months of rhetoric,pages of dossier,accusations,arguments and counter arguments.The people of Pakistan..............and i am talking about the free thinking ones ......of which I am sure there are a few are just as much victims of their inept and corrupt government as Indians.And most interestingly suddenly Indira Gandhi is beginning to be seen as a saviour. In a country full of sheep I still think she was the best shepherd we had.
Shame for Pakistan.. now not only any sports team stopped travelled to their country, even no one would like to vist this terror place. This is very serious matter, Pakistan should drop from hosting forthcoming cricket world cup.
PM Gilani says the attack was aimed at giving Pak a bad name. The man doesn't seem to know that Pak already had a stinking name.
It is difficult to have sympathy for the Sri Lankans. They went into the risky tour with their eyes open.
We Sri Lankans do not have any regret on the tour, we regret the incident. When India refused to tour Pak, it was due to Mumbai attacks. SL relationship with Pak is great. LTTE has hired Pak terrorits to carry out this attack. These LTTE were trained by India and India is answerable to our SL problem as well
Some bjp supporters are trying to cash this incident, but they must understand, that only the Congress party has been able to unite the entire nation of India. This is the only party whose policies took Pakistan to task on several occasions. This is also the party whose party program does not discriminate any person from any religion or caste.While the Congress gave one best leader after the other, but the others gave us leaders like Chicken Curry Vajpaee, who ate by air flown chicken curries instead of taking care of the nation. Other were either pishab drinkers and were in the process of baking dung based biscuits and urine based cold drinks, others escorted top terrorists to Kandahar and called Jinnhan a secular.
It is the other way around my friend! When BJP was in power ,except for the Kandahar incident , there was no other problem. The BJP took great pains to free the hostages and Jaswant personally went along.Only the hostages were important then in exchange for that useless terrorist scumbag.
vanish the pakistan
Again a henious crime has been committed by Pakistan based terrorists, and pakistan is silent. Pakistan has become a threat to the entire world, because some of it's citizens are involved in various terrorist attacks around the globe. Perhaps a combination of Saudi money and Pakistani jihadi terrorism has made it possible to attack innocent people in different parts of the world. Pakistan should be taken to task. I sincerely wish, that Indira Gandhi was alive, because she was the only dare devil India ever had, she was the person who went all the way inside Pakistan to free Mujibur Rehman, and during her Prime Ministership, our brave soldiers captured more than 90000 pows.
It has been a sad incident. However, the line taken by Arnab Goswami ( Times Now )is also not good. Within hours of the incident, he was calling Pakistan a banana republic. With such a benchmark, I wonder what would he call India which has had most of its national, religious and economic icons under terrorist attack. Congress has named Pak as Somalia and some Indian official was seen muttering that ' this seemed contrived'.Oh come on, get real. We have had zero success in dealing with terrorism so let us not point fingers at others. At least their police did manage to prevent any major damage to the players, entirely on their own.
Aloak is pretending to be an intellectual making wise arguments...go on alok we are listning.
Within 24 hrs Pak govt would say India did it to take revenge of 26/11, ISI would say LTTE did it, Pak Army would say it was Non State Actors, Navy would say they came by Sea, Media would say Pak is the Victim of Terrorism etc etc......
Playing Cricket is against Islam. So Islamists attacked Sri Lanka Team
i guess you ( Raman )should restrain yourself for catagorising people based on religion. Hindu Extremists like Ram Sena also say that cricket is aginst Hindutive so wht do u say on that. These people were TERRORISTS
Third world war going to be strated .this shooting for srilankan players are given by there goverment plan
Pakistan is terrorist country, there end is Pakistan helpfull for oll other countrys.
There seems to be a convergence of interests b/w LTTE and the Islamic Terrorists in Pakistan, who are bent on taking over Pakistan. Both the terrrorist parties have collaborated in the past. The islamic terrorist groups have provided arms to LTTE and LTTE has helped the Islamic terrorists with funneling their funds in the South East Asian countries. While no tears need be shed for the Pakistan establishment (u reap as u sow), it's sad to see the Pakistan nation now becoming persona non-grata in the international field. The implications go much beyond sports.
The genocide to tamilian civilians in SriLanka cannot be supported. This atrocity in Pakistan cannot be compared with the genocide in Sri Lanka.
hay stop blaming on ltte they are not terrorist being a tamil from lanka i no the situation better than u people living in a safe country like India u can understand the situation there they are fighters for tamils there
your freedom fighter is somebodys terrorist.....things will move similarly.
Lankan players are being flown to Abu Dhabi from Pakistan, after the terrorist attack.Why they cannot go directly to Colombo? Difficult to understand this plan of lankans.
in news if anybody is leaving Pak or going to Pak, it is awalys through gulf for the reasons known only to Allah...
Where is the human right pepole when police take action against terrorist they cry for the peace otherside they can not do anything when this type of incident take place, in other word they stop police from doing there duty and encourage terrorist moral, if our country will not take any strong action one day our country will also become like pakistan,so pls pray for our future, which lay in the hand of politician and in my view our dark.
My dear Pakistani brothers and sisters. I hate to say it but I TOLD YOU SO. In the beggining you were controlling the terrorist. Now they control you. BOOM !!!