Colombo: A Pakistani bus driver hailed as a hero for driving through gunfire to save the Sri Lanka cricket team during an attack on the team at Lahore last month will be honored on Monday.
The March 3 attack in Lahore killed six policemen and a bus driver, and several members of the Sri Lanka team were wounded when more than a dozen gunmen used rifles, grenades and rocket launchers to attack a team convoy on its way to Gaddafi Stadium during the second a Test against Pakistan.
The players and officials said Sri Lankan casualties could have been far worse if the driver of their team bus, Mohammad Khalil, did not act so quickly.
Khalil was credited — as bullets pierced the sides and windshield of the bus — with putting his foot down hard on the accelerator to power the vehicle away from the coordinated attack.
Moments later the bus, riddled with 25 bullet holes, careered into the stadium and medics rushed to treat the bloodied athletes.
"All of us were taken aback," Khalil said a day after the attack. "I did not stop and kept moving."
A ceremony will be held on Monday in Colombo to honor Khalil, at which the Sri Lanka national team is expected to attend.
Thilan Samaraweera, the most seriously wounded of the Sri Lankan, was released from hospital two weeks after the attack.
The Sri Lankan team is back in training ahead of the Twenty20 world championship in England in June and a visit by Pakistan for three Tests in July. New Zealand then scheduled to tour Sri Lanka in late August.
The attack was among the highest-profile terrorist strikes on a sports team since the 1972 Munich Olympics, when Palestinian militants killed 11 Israeli athletes.
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