International   

Atmosphere sombre in Lahore after attack

Lahore: Teeming with people and traffic at all times, Liberty Chowk is this city’s most well-known shopping district, where big department stores jostle for attention with massive hoardings and small retailers.

On Wednesday, however, it was the scene of a pilgrimage for many Lahorites who came to pay respects at the site where six policemen were killed in a terrorist attack on the Sri Lankan cricket team which escaped with minor injuries to five players and their coach.

A steady stream of people crossed into the massive roundabout where the cricket convoy was ambushed by 12 gunmen and laid flowers and wreaths in memory of the policemen and praised them for laying down their lives in the line of duty. Pasted on the street was a poster of a young traffic warden who was also killed in the attack.

But the praise heaped on the policemen could not hide their failure to apprehend a single attacker.

Fresh footage obtained by Geo Television showed the attack began at about 8.35 a.m., and ended just five minutes later, belying police claims of a 25-minute exchange of fire.

The gunmen simply walked away from the scene carrying their rucksacks and their automatic assault rifles and rode away on two motorcycles, unobstructed by the police or anyone else.

That a dozen armed terrorists could be hiding somewhere in their city has alarmed Lahorites.

The city has returned to its usual bustle a day after the attack, but the atmosphere is sombre.

“The mood on the street is: this has gone too far. It’s very unsettling,” said I.A. Rehman, director of the non-government Human Rights Commission of Pakistan.

The capital of the Punjab province prides itself on being the liveliest city in Pakistan, but Tuesday’s attack has left it shaken. This was not the first terrorist attack in the city, but no one imagined a near replication of the Mumbai attacks in the heart of Lahore.

The recovery of a large cache of weapons from bags dumped by the attackers has reinforced the view that they came prepared to possibly hijack the coach carrying the Sri Lankan cricketers and to take them hostage.

A kilometre from Liberty Chowk, at Qaddafi Stadium, the implications of the attack for Pakistani cricket are all too obvious. Had all gone well, the Sri Lankan cricket team should have been playing its second Test against Pakistan.

Instead, on Tuesday, they were evacuated from the middle of the ground in a military helicopter hours after being driven to the safety of the stadium by the brave driver of the bus in which they were on their way to the game.

On Wednesday, which would have been the fourth day of the Test had all gone well, groundsmen watered the grass where the helicopter landed, and the empty stands mocked at the unmarked scoreboard.

“The message of [Tuesday’s] attack was that the government should know its limits,” said Mr. Rehman. “[The jihadists] want the government to slow down its actions [against militant groups], whether it is to do with the post-Mumbai actions, or the drone attacks in the tribal areas. [With such attacks], people will also start putting pressure on government to stop taking action against the jihadi groups.”

Printer friendly page  
Send this article to Friends by E-Mail

Stories in this Section

Challenges are severe but opportunities still exist, says Hu
Iran funding terrorism, says Hillary
Complete takeover of north soon: Army
Vivek Kundra joins Obama’s team
Atmosphere sombre in Lahore after attack
Pakistan police probing all angles

Copyright © 2009, The Hindu. Republication or redissemination of the contents of this screen are expressly prohibited without the written consent of The Hindu