No trace of Lahore attackers; five suspects being quizzed

Two days after the attack on the Sri Lankan cricket team in Lahore, Pakistani investigators were struggling to identify the dozen fugitive terrorists as they quizzed five suspects who claimed that the attackers had stayed in the city for a month before striking. Notwithstanding video footage showing the terrorists at Liberty Chowk spraying bullets on the vehicles ferrying the Sri Lankan squad, there was no official word on any headway being made in tracking them down.

One of the five suspects, a resident of Rehmanpura, had a photograph of one of the attackers, the Dawn newspaper quoted its sources as saying. The suspects told police that the attackers had stayed in Lahore for a month to plan the assault.
Police are also tracing the persons whose phone numbers were found on the SIM of the mobile phone left behind by the terrorists. Babar Shahzad had reportedly purchased one of the SIMs used by the terrorists.

Shahzad and a teenager named Dilawar Hussain were arrested from a village at Rahim Yar Khan in southern Punjab. The three other suspects were detained in Lahore.
These five suspects were traced after police found bag with a mobile phone that was thrown by the terrorists following the attack near the Liberty traffic roundabout.
LTTE has denied any link to the attacks on Sri Lankan cricketers in Lahore, saying the Tamil Tigers have no connections with those terrorists. "We don't have any connections with those people (Lahore attackers)," LTTE's spokesman Thileepan told the Radio division of Australia's Special Broadcasting Service last night.
Answering a specific question that there are some suggestions that the Tamil Tigers could have been connected to those attacks, Thileepan replied : "No, that's not true." Asked whether the Tamil Tigers condemned the attack, he said: "Actually, we haven't made any comments on it.

" He also stated that the LTTE would not agree to the Red Cross call for a mass evacuation of civilians from the conflict zone and it would not surrender, despite a looming humanitarian disaster. Thileepan claimed that more than 350,000 people were living with the LTTE and right now about four villages were under their control - Mattalam, Pokkarnai, Mulliyavaikal and Puthmattalam.

He admitted that the Tamil people were facing acute shortage of food and water and 11 people, including children and two women, have died because of starvation of food. Thileepan claimed that their supreme leader Vellupillai Prabhakaran was still with them along with his wife and children. video>>