Close call for B’desh cricket team
CHRISTCHURCH: Bangladesh’s Test cricketers were just a few minutes from being caught up in Friday’s massacre in New Zealand when they arrived at a Christchurch mosque as shooting began, a team spokesman said.
In a chilling account, Khaled Mashud described how most of the Bangladeshi team drove up to the Masjid al Noor in a bus just as the attack got underway.
At least 49 people died in attacks on two mosques during Friday prayers in what appeared to be the worst assault on Muslims in a Western country.
“We were very close, we could see the mosque. We were maximum 50 yards away. I would say we are very lucky,” Mashud told reporters in Christchurch.
“If we were there three to four minutes earlier, we would have been in the mosque, massive thing might have happened.”
Mashud said about 17 Bangladeshi players and team staff on the bus watched as blood-soaked victims staggered from the building.
“It looked like video, what we usually see in a movie. From the bus we saw bloodied people coming out of the mosque,” he said.
“We were in the bus about eight to 10 minutes. We kept our heads down in the bus, in case of any firing (towards them). DONALD TRUMP, US President
IMRAN KHAN, Pakistan PM
NEWDELHI: The Supreme Court on Friday sought the Election Commission’s response on a plea by opposition leaders seeking the counting of Voter Verifiable Paper Audit Trail (VVPAT) slips of 50 per cent of EVMS in each constituency before the Lok Sabha results are declared.
A bench comprising Chief Justice Ranjan Gogoi and justices Deepak Gupta and Sanjiv Khanna listed the plea of the opposition leaders for March 25 and asked the EC to depute an officer to assist the court.
Several opposition leaders, including Andhra Pradesh chief minister Chandrababu Naidu, Delhi chief minister Arvind Kejriwal and others, had moved the apex court, seeking the verification of 50 per cent of votes by paper trail before announcing the results of the upcoming Lok Sabha polls. Naidu, the lead petitioner, had declared in February that the parties will be moving the apex court against the use of EVMS.
49 innocent people have so senselessly died, with so many more seriously injured. The U.S. stands by New Zealand for anything we can do.