Terrorism in Pakistan: Follow Up to Mumbai?

The New York Times is reporting that the murders today of eight members of Sri Lanka's national cricket team have all the markings of a Mumbai-style terrorist attack:

A dozen gunmen attacked the Sri Lankan national cricket team and its police escort in a brazen commando-style operation in the city of Lahore on Tuesday, killing six police officers and wounding at least six cricketers before fleeing in motorized rickshaws, the Lahore police chief and a Sri Lankan official said.

The attackers ambushed a bus carrying the cricket team, using assault rifles, grenades and anti-tank missiles. Some Pakistani officials likened the audacity of the assault to the attacks in Mumbai, India, in November.

Two bystanders were also killed and six officers were wounded, according to the police.

The attack struck not only a major Pakistani city but also the country’s most popular sport — a game followed with near-obsessive fascination by many in the region. “Cricketers have never been attacked in Pakistan despite what the situation has been in the country,” Rashid Latif, a former Pakistan cricket captain, told Reuters. “Today is a black day for Pakistan cricket and a black day for Pakistan.”

For a nation seething with conflict between the authorities and militants linked to the Taliban and Al Qaeda, and accused by some of its neighbors of harboring terrorists, the blow to Pakistan’s international prestige and self-image from Tuesday’s attack seemed likely to be profound and enduring — certainly, as far as its sporting ties to the rest of the world were concerned ....

Two Sri Lankan players — Thilan Samaraweera and Tharanga Paranavitana — were being treated for bullet wounds in a hospital but were in stable condition, said a spokesman for the Sri Lankan High Commission. Team captain Mahela Jayawardene and four other players sustained minor injuries, and British assistant coach Paul Farbrace and Ahsan Raza, an umpire, were also injured, The A.P. said. The governor of Punjab, Salman Taseer, described the shooting as a terrorist attack, and said there were similarities with the bloody assaults in Mumbai, India, in November.

“They had heavy weapons,” said Mr. Taseer, as he arrived at the scene. “These were the same methods and the same sort of people as hit Mumbai.”

At least 163 people died in Mumbai when a squad of militants, many of them in their 20s and trained as commandos, attacked targets across the city. Senior members of Lashkar-e-Taiba, a Pakistani militant group active in Kashmir, have been arrested by Pakistan in connection with the attacks.

There's more at the link.

See also the debate, at the video, on Pakistan's border militants from Sunday's panel discussion on Fareed Zakaria's GPS. Fawaz Gerges couldn't get far enough away from the notion that the Taliban sponsors and practices terror, with a rebuttal from Christopher Hitchens.

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Related: See Hitchens', "Don't Say a Word: A U.N. resolution seeks to criminalize opinions that differ with the Islamic faith," via Memeorandum.