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.