Pakistan’s government has announced the country will boycott its match against India in the Twenty20 World Cup, even while competing in the rest of the cricket tournament.
Pakistan has not explicitly stated a reason for pulling out of the game with India, which was scheduled to take place on February 15. However, Mohsin Naqvi, Pakistan’s interior minister and chairman of the Pakistan Cricket Board (PCB), has blamed India for attacks in Balochistan on Saturday in which at least 31 civilians, 17 security personnel and 145 fighters were killed, according to authorities.
Pakistan’s decision on Sunday to boycott the game against India also comes amid tensions between the neighbours over a series of events that led to Bangladesh being barred from the World Cup. Early on Saturday, armed men launched coordinated attacks on police stations in the provincial capital of Quetta and other parts of Pakistan’s Balochistan province, according to officials.
These were the deadliest attacks in Balochistan in decades with nearly 200 people, most of them fighters, killed. Pakistan has spent decades battling a separatist movement in Balochistan, where fighters have been targeting state forces, foreign nationals and people from other parts of Pakistan in the mineral-rich province that borders Afghanistan and Iran.
The outlawed Balochistan Liberation Army (BLA) claimed responsibility for Saturday’s attacks, according to the AFP news agency.
The group said it targeted military installations and police and civil administration officials in gun attacks and suicide bombings in nine districts of Balochistan, Pakistan’s largest but least populated and most impoverished province On the same day as the attack, Naqvi accused India of being behind the attacks in Balochistan as he spoke to local media with the province’s chief minister, Sarfraz Bugti.
“These were not normal terrorists. India is behind these attacks. I can tell you for sure that India planned these attacks along with these terrorists,” Naqvi said without presenting any evidence. Yes. On January 24, the International Cricket Council (ICC) kicked Bangladesh out of the tournament, replacing it with Scotland, after Dhaka refused to play its matches in India, which is cohosting the World Cup with Sri Lanka.
Amid rising tensions between India and Bangladesh, the Bangladesh Cricket Board asked that its games be shifted from India to Sri Lanka, but its request was rejected by the ICC.
Bangladesh cited security concerns, but the ICC said there was no “credible or verifiable security threat to the Bangladesh national team in India”.
The monthlong tournament, which begins on Saturday, will be the first time Bangladesh will miss a men’s T20 World Cup.
Source: Here
