Wed, March 04, 2009
INTRO: At least six members of the Sri Lankan cricket team and their British assistant coach are wounded as gunmen ambush their bus as it drives under police escort in the Pakistani city of Lahore.
MOREINFO: Five police officers and a coach driver were killed in the attack by about a dozen gunmen, who opened fire on the bus with small arms, grenades and rockets as it slowed at a traffic circle near the 60,000-seater Gaddafi stadium, where the team was due to play a test match against hosts Pakistan.
SCRIPT:
The attack on the Sri Lankan cricket team has stunned the sports world.
Not since Palestinian militants massacred Israeli athletes at the 1972 Munich Olympics have international sportsmen been subjected to an attack on this scale.
Several members of the Sri Lankan squad suffered minor injuries when gunmen ambushed their tour bus as it drove under police escort to play a test match in the Pakistani city of Lahore.
Up to 12 militants, armed with rifles, grenades and rocket launchers attacked the convoy from different directions as it slowed at a traffic circle, metres from the Gaddafi Stadium.
Five police officers were killed in the ambush along with the driver of a bus carrying the Australian umpires.
Police described the attack as a well-executed operation.
(SOUNDBITE) (English) UNIDENTIFIED POLICE COMMANDER SAYING:
"They came to the spot, they were properly masked, they were armed with rocket launchers, they were armed with hand grenades and they started firing on the Sri Lankan team."
The Sri Lankan team coach managed to get away, almost certainly sparing the squad from serious injury or worse.
Bullet holes in the windscreen showed how close this came to being a terrible tragedy.
Players Samaraweera and Paranavithana are being treated in hospital for minor shrapnel wounds.
Skipper Jayawardena and vice-captain, Kumar Sangakkara and spin bowler Mendis also received cuts.
Sri Lanka immediately cancelled the rest of the tour as Pakistan airlifted the team from the Lahore cricket ground.
Police recovered an assortment of weapons from the scene but it's now clear that all the gunmen managed to escape, heaping further embarrassment on the country's security forces.
The bloody scenes on the streets of Lahore snuffed out any hopes Pakistan might have held of coaxing the cricketing world back to its grounds.
The cricket-mad country has been starved of test matches for over a year because of security concerns.
It could be many years before international cricket is played here again.
Helen Long, Reuters
