Sri Lanka was one country who always turned up to play in Pakistan when everyone else got the heaves — us, the Windies, India and so on. A fine repayment for their courage they’ve received.

Robert Merkel over at LP has a post up, as does Tim Blair. The latter also has chilling footage of part of the attack captured by a local Pakistani media outlet. To my mind, regular commenter Adrien captures the profound shitfulness of the situation in his comment at LP:

1. The govt in Pakistan has conceded the NW Province to Sharia law, effectively making it an extension of the Taliban ’state’.

2. Pakistan is totally fubar.

3. They’ve also got nukes.

4. Gulp.

UPDATE: Sri Lanka’s coach is Australian Trevor Bayliss. His account of what happened is here. Money quote:

I didn’t see much, but the guys at the front of the bus said they saw cars in front of us stop, then back-up. People then jumped out and started shooting. It’s strange now watching it on the television. They’re saying that we were being shot at from three or four different directions. It’s a bit surreal.

To be honest, everyone on the bus was pretty calm. I was on the floor thinking, ‘there’s nothing I can really do about it.’ Six or seven of the players were hit, some more seriously than others, but thankfully nothing is life threatening.

(Samaraweera) is probably the worst of the lot. Our new opening batsman, (Tharanga) Paranavitana, gave us a fright. There was blood all over his chest after he was hit by a bullet or piece of shrapnel from the side. There was a fair bit of blood in the dressing room. But I’m looking at him now and he seems OK, joking around as if nothing has happened.

They took them both to hospital, and they arrived back with us a couple of hours ago. They’ve got (Samaraweera) pretty drugged up at the moment, but they expect that he’ll be ok, just a bit sore for a while. The early reports are that he should be able to play again, but we’ll just have to wait and see how bad the damage is and he recovers.