Lahore attack bears hallmarks of Mumbai

(Left) A Pakistani police commando (L) carries in his right hand a rocket launcher used by gunmen during an attack on a bus which was carrying the Sri Lankan cricket team in Lahore yesterday. (Right) In this frame taken from television unidentified gunmen fire their weapons during an attack on a vehicle carrying the Sri Lankan cricket team in Lahore yesterday.
Photo: AFP

Pakistan said that yesterday's ambush on the Sri Lankan cricket team bore all the hallmarks of the Mumbai attacks as the country speculated who could have been responsible for the brazen raid.
There was no immediate claim of responsibility and the gunmen fled after a furious shootout with Pakistani police, flinging open the doors to a host of possible culprits as the authorities launched a city-wide manhunt.
Officials and commentators alluded to extremists linked to Pakistan's al-Qaeda and Taliban infested northwest; Islamist groups spawned in Kashmir; Indian intelligence and Tamil Tiger separatists in Sri Lanka.
Pakistan denounced the attacks as the work of "terrorists," painting the nuclear-armed Muslim nation as a victim in the global "war on terror".
"The attack resembles the Mumbai attacks," Khaled Farooq, chief of police in Punjab province, told reporters in the eastern city of Lahore.
"That was also a commando action and this is also a commando operation," Farooq said referring to Mumbai, where gunmen killed 165 people last November.
New Delhi blamed that 60-hour siege on Pakistan's banned Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) group, spawned from Pakistan's conflict with India over the fate of the divided Himalayan territory of Kashmir.
But Farooq, the top police officer in Punjab which borders India, said the "attackers looked like Pashtuns" -- hinting that those behind the assault may have links to Pakistan's semi-autonomous and wild tribal areas.