ISLAMABAD Pakistan`s press on Wednesday blamed Pakistani militants and Al-Qaeda for the attacks on the Sri Lankan cricket team, saying they had sounded `the requiem of cricket` in the country.
Pakistan press criticised the government`s policy of negotiating with militants in an attempt to neutralise extremist insurgencies along the country`s northwest border with Afghanistan.
`If the state resorts to negotiating with militants from a position of weakness, what we will get is disaster, across the board,` it said.
`Even our most esteemed guests are no longer safe in this country,” said the daily in an editorial entitled `Tragedy in Lahore`.
Remarking that `terror bowls out cricket`, The News pointed the finger at arch rival India in its main news story.
`An intelligence report had already forewarned the law enforcement agencies about the attack on the Sri Lankan players on their way to the stadium at the behest of RAW (Indias Research Analysis Wing intelligence agency),` it said.
But an editorial said the attackers were most likely `our own home-grown terrorist organisations` as there was no shortage of `highly competent, well armed and trained groups within our own borders capable of such operations`.
`The world has once again seen that Pakistan is an unsafe place, no matter where you are or who you are... We heard the requiem for international cricket in Pakistan, but we also heard the steady footfall of extremist forces as they march ever-near to power,` it said.
`Al Qaeda strikes in Lahore,` ran the outspoken Daily Times in an editorial, drawing a connection between the perpetrators of Tuesday`s attacks and Osama bin Ladens terror network.
The newspaper pointed the finger at Sunni extremist group Laskar-e-Jhangvi named by the interior ministry chief as the orchestrators of a suicide bombing at the Marriott Hotel in Islamabad last September which killed 60 people.
`The latest Lahore attack was not a suicide-bombing which usually indicates circumstances of reduced possibilities for the terrorists. It was an operation where the terrorists saw an open-space opportunity where a drilled squad of terrorists could accomplish the mission,` it said.
