Pakistani police make arrests in attack on cricket team

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.

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