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ISLAMABAD: A police official in Lahore said Wednesday that about 20 people had been detained in the attack on Sri Lankan cricketers in which six police officers were killed and six players were wounded.

Nasir Bajwa, the deputy superintendent of police in the Model Town section of Lahore, said the suspects were detained Tuesday night, hours after the attack. He gave no details of the identities of those detained.

The owner of a hostel in an area of Lahore close to the attack said the police had detained about 13 students who were at his premises. Muhammad Ashger said the students were arrested around midnight. A rocket launcher and clothes with bloodstains were recovered from the hostel, the police said.

“They want to show to the world they are making arrests,” Mr. Sherpao said.

“They don’t know anything. There is not any semblance of government.”

Newspaper editorials accused Mr. Zardari’s government and the opposition leader, Nawaz Sharif, of devoting more attention to power politics than fighting terrorism.

“The politicians need to wake up, bury the hatchet in the national good and rout the real enemy,” an editorial in Wednesday’s edition of Dawn, a national English-language newspaper, said.

Criticism of Pakistan’s security arrangements intensified Wednesday when Chris Broad, a British umpire who had been traveling with the Sri Lankan team, launched a harsh public tirade against the Pakistani authorities, saying police melted away as the attackers opened fire. “We were promised that we would get presidential-style security,”

Another nearby hostel was searched by the police but no one was detained, Mr. Ashger said.

A former interior minister, Aftab Ahmed Sherpao, who is a member of the Pakistan Peoples Party of President Asif Ali Zardari, dismissed the detentions.

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan: Pakistani police arrested dozens more political demonstrators Thursday after the civilian government banned a national protest march, evoking for many Pakistanis the sweeping security restrictions of the military dictator, General Pervez Musharraf.

The arrests of 60 people at an anti-government rally in Karachi on Thursday marked the second straight day in which the police rounded up protesters. On Wednesday hundreds were arrested in an unusually tough action that deepened the popular discontent with President Asif Ali Zardari, whose six months as leader of Pakistan have been marked by a worsening insurgency by Al Qaeda and the Taliban, a weak economy and what is widely perceived as rule by an accidental leader.

The ban on protests also heightened the showdown between the titans of Pakistan’s politics: Zardari, the widower of Benazir Bhutto and the head of the secular Pakistan Peoples Party, who is backed by the United States; and Nawaz Sharif, a former prime minister who surveys suggest is more popular among Pakistanis but whom Washington sees as less committed to quelling the insurgency in Pakistan.

The minister of information, Sherry Rehman, said late on Wednesday that the government had imposed a section of the criminal code banning rallies and had arrested supporters of Sharif to preserve law and order. She called it “unfortunate” that the measures had to be taken. An estimated 300 political activists from Sharif’s party have been arrested since Tuesday, according to the home secretary of Punjab, Rao Iftikhar Ahmed.

The prime minister, Yousaf Raza Gilani, met with the chief of the army, General Ashfaz Parvez Kayani, on Wednesday, according to the prime minister’s spokesman. Kayani has indicated that after the nearly decade-long rule of Musharraf, he would prefer to keep the army out of politics. But Pakistan has a history of military takeovers when civilian governments falter, and it was possible that the army would step in if the turmoil persisted, analysts said.

Even before the ban on the march, the tensions between the Sharif and Zardari camps had been steadily increasing.

The senior official at the Ministry of Interior, Rehman Malik, a confidant of Zardari’s, threatened this week to charge Sharif with sedition. He cited a speech by Sharif last Friday in which Sharif said the march was a good idea because it could result in revolution in Pakistan.

Last month, Zardari imposed executive rule on Punjab, where the brother of Nawaz Sharif, Shahbaz Sharif, was the chief minister. His party held more seats in the local assembly there, and he was considered effective.

On Feb. 25, Pakistan’s Supreme Court disqualified the Sharif brothers from holding elected office, a ruling that was widely interpreted as a political decision made at Zardari’s behest.

Zardari’s move to consolidate control and the security measures imposed Wednesday served as a catalyst to rally discontent that had been festering for months over his style of governance. Zardari inherited the mantle of the Pakistan Peoples Party after his wife, Bhutto, was assassinated in December 2007. He served 11 years in jail on allegations of corruption and murder, which he says were politically motivated but that clouded his reputation.

The party rode a sympathy vote for Bhutto to election victory in early 2008, but a coalition led by Zardari and Sharif fell apart, largely over Zardari’s refusal to reinstate the former chief justice, Iftikhar Muhammad Chaudhry.

Zardari’s government has banned gatherings of more than four people for two weeks, but Sharif vowed Wednesday to press ahead with the national protest he is spearheading in conjunction with the lawyers’ movement, which has campaigned for an independent judiciary.

That protest now appears aimed at eventually toppling the Zardari government, because the government ban is inciting the fury of many of the same groups that helped to push Musharraf from the presidency last September. The protests built steadily after Musharraf, then both the president and the army chief, dismissed the chief justice of the Supreme Court in March 2007. The ban on the national march bore echoes of Musharraf’s imposition of emergency rule in November 2007, several lawyers said.

The first protesters in the nationwide march are expected to leave the city of Quetta on Thursday and converge with others from around the country on the capital, Islamabad, on Monday.

The political turmoil comes as Washington is conducting a major policy review on Pakistan and Afghanistan. The review is expected to extend more aid to the Zardari government to help it counter the insurgency that is increasingly destabilizing the nuclear-armed nation.

6 Sri Lanka cricketers hurt, 7 others killed in Lahore shooting

LAHORE: Seven people including five policemen were killed and six Sri Lankan cricketers were wounded in a shooting attack in Lahore on Tuesday.
Sri Lankan tour has been called off after the attack. According to sources, unknown attackers opened fire on Sri Lankan cricket team bus near Gaddafi Stadium.
Intense exchange of fire took place between police and unknown attackers. CCPO Lahore Habibur Rehman said there were 12 attackers carrying rocket launchers; hand grenades, Kalashnikovs who reportedly reached the site in rickshaws. Seven people including five cops were killed in the shooting.

No World Cup games in Pakistan unless dramatic change: ICC

LONDON: Pakistan cannot host international cricket unless it dramatically improves security, the head of the sport’s world body said after Tuesday’s Lahore attacks, questioning notably the 2011 World Cup.
“In the current situation it clearly is a very dangerous place,” David Morgan, president of the International Cricket Council, told media after the deadly attacks on Sri Lanka’s cricket team in Lahore.
Asked about plans for the World Cup, due to be played in four Indian subcontinent countries, Morgan said: “Things will have to change dramatically in Pakistan in my opinion if any of the games are to be staged there.”
“I think that international cricket in Pakistan is out of the question until there is a very significant change, a regime change I guess,” he added.
An ICC spokesman said he assumed Morgan was referring to a call by Pakistani senators this week for the Pakistani cricket board to be sacked.
Eight people died when the Sri Lankan cricket team’s convoy was attacked by masked gunmen as they traveled to play at the Gaddafi stadium in Lahore. Seven team members were injured.
Pakistan’s High Commissioner to Britain Wajid Hasan meanwhile told British media that it was too early to talk of the end of international cricket in his country.
“I wouldn’t like to rush to that sort of conclusion,” he said.

Team bus driver averts major mishap

LAHORE: Bus driver of the Sri Lankan cricket team Mehar Khalil has said that attackers threw a hand-grenade toward the bus but it did not go off.
Talking to media, driver Khalil said that while taking a turn through Liberty Chowk, unknown gunmen sprayed bullets on the bus. “However, I managed to gear up the bus to take it away from the spot”, said Khalil.
Khalil said an attacker threw a hand-grenade but it could not go off.
He told the two Sri Lankan players in the bus received bullets and they were rushed to the hospital.

India slams ‘inadequate’ Pakistan after Lahore attack

NEW DELHI: India denounced “hopelessly inadequate” Pakistani security after Tuesday’s attack on the Sri Lankan cricket team in Lahore and cited Islamabad’s failure to crush militant groups on its soil.
“The security for the Sri Lankan cricket team was hopelessly inadequate,” Home Minister P. Chidambaram said as he condemned the assault by gunmen that left eight people dead and wounded seven team members.
Foreign Minister Pranab Mukherjee told reporters. “Unless infrastructure and facilities available to terrorist organisations within Pakistan or territory under its control are completely dismantled… repetition of these incidents will take place,” he said.
New Delhi has been pressuring Islamabad to crack down on Islamist militant groups and dismantle their training camps since the Mumbai attacks last November.
The Sri Lankan team was only in Pakistan because a tour by the Indian team had been cancelled in the wake of the Mumbai attacks. “It was not a pleasant decision (to cancel) but we were constrained to take it because the security situation in Pakistan was not safe,” Mukerjee said, calling on Islamabad to “take strict measures” against those responsible. “This menace, which is the biggest menace… in the post Cold War era, should be tackled,” he said
Indian foreign ministry spokesman Vishnu Prakash also piled pressure on Islamabad, saying Pakistan-based “terrorists” were a threat to the entire world. “It is in Pakistan’s own interest to take prompt, meaningful and decisive steps to dismantle the terrorist infrastructure once and for all,” Prakash said.
India’s Minister of State for External Affairs Anand Sharma said the attack underscored “the enormity of the threat” emerging from Pakistan, while India’s governing Congress party branded Pakistan “the epicentre and fountainhead of terror.”
“Every country in the world must unite against this scourge by isolating the country and demanding immediate concrete results,” Congress spokesman Abhishek Singhvi said.

Sri Lanka stunned, angered by Lahore shooting

COLOMBO: Cricket obsessed Sri Lanka reeled in shock and anger Tuesday at the attack on its national team as it toured Pakistan in place of an Indian squad that had backed out because of security worries.
President Mahinda Rajapakse condemned the attack and ordered Foreign Minister Rohitha Bogollagama to fly to Pakistan to oversee the evacuation of the Sri Lankan players — seven of whom were wounded when gunmen fired on the team’s bus in Lahore.
Seven Sri Lankan players, including skipper Mahela Jayawardene, were hurt, along with an assistant coach. The Sri Lankan team was in Pakistan in place of the Indian team, which had pulled out of a scheduled tour following the November attacks in Mumbai. Sri Lankan officials declined to speculate on who may have been behind the attack, amid suggestions that it
s own rebel Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) may have been involved. “We are uncertain as to who perpetrated this attack,” Foreign Secretary Palitha Kohona told.
“I have heard the LTTE mentioned on the airwaves. There is considerable speculation, but we will await the outcome of the investigation before we comment,” he said. “We are reassured that Pakistan authorities are conducting a probe to arrest the assailants and bring them to justice,” he added. The Sri Lankan military is on the verge of crushing the LTTE, which has been fighting a long-standing insurgency for an independent Tamil homeland in the northeast of the island.
In Sri Lanka, the sense of shock at the shootings was felt by cricket officials and fans alike. Airline executive Lalith Fernando was dismayed that any group would target international sporting teams trying to help Pakistan improve its image. “Pakistanis are cricket-crazy like us Sri Lankans. The terrorist attack only harms Pakistan more. It’s a shame,” Fernando said.
Sri Lanka Cricket chief executive Duleep Mendis said families of the players had been informed about the incident and moves were under way to fly the team home immediately. “They (the players) are shaken, their families are worried too. But we are doing our best to get everybody home, perhaps tonight,” Mendis said.
Sri Lankan Sports Minister Gamini Lokuge insisted that the safety of the players had been given all the necessary consideration before the tour began. “The team was provided with heavy security and I was happy with the preparations the Pakistani officials had taken before we undertook the Test tour,” Lokuge said. He condemned what he described as “an isolated terrorist attack.”
Graeme Labrooy, head of the Sri Lanka Cricketers’ Association said the shooting was bound to deter other Test-playing nations from touring Pakistan and Sri Lanka.
“Other countries will think twice before touring here or Pakistan, because of the terrorism problem,” Labrooy said.
Up to 12 gunmen attacked the team’s convoy near the Gaddafi stadium with rockets, hand grenades and automatic weapons, triggering a 25-minute gun-fight with security forces.