| Yesterday’s events can be seen here. |
- At least 290 people have been killed and 500 more injured in a series of explosions targeting churches holding Easter services and hotels in Sri Lanka.
- Most of the dead are believed to be Sri Lankans, but officials say about 30 people from other countries have been killed. Three UK nationals and two US-UK dual nationals were among the dead. Two Turkish nationals, one Dutch, one Chinese, one Portuguese, and one Japanese have been killed, their respective foreign ministries have confirmed.
- No one has claimed responsibility for the attacks but Sri Lanka’s defence minister, Ruwan Wijewardene, said the culprits had been identified and were religious extremists. He said suicide bombers were responsible for the majority of the morning’s bombings and that the wave of attacks was the work of a single group.
- The prime minister, Ranil Wickremesinghe, said security services had been “aware of information” of a possible attack up to 10 days ago. “We must also look into why adequate precautions were not taken,” he told reporters on Sunday.
- Twenty-four people have been reported to have been arrested so far.
- The government has imposed a curfew with immediate effect. It also shut down social media and messaging services.
- There were six initial blasts, at three hotels and three churches, before two more explosions some time later, at a guest house and housing scheme, with two people reported to have been killed at the former.
- Harsha de Silva, a government minister, said the last two blasts appeared to have been carried out by the culprits as they fled from police.
| The Guardian continues liveblogging here. |
9th bomb located & successfully defused at Colombo International Airport in Sri Lanka
[TWITTER]
#BREAKING: 9th bomb located & successfully defused at Colombo International Airport in Sri Lanka- local media
— ELINT News (@ELINTNews) April 21, 2019
Sri Lanka bomber queued at hotel buffet then unleashed devastation
[DAWN] The jacket wallah waited patiently in a queue for the Easter Sunday breakfast buffet at Sri Lanka's Cinnamon Grand hotel before setting off explosives strapped to his back.Carrying a plate, the man, who had registered at the hotel the night before as Mohammed Azzam Mohammed, was just about to be served when he set off his devastating strike in the packed restaurant, a manager at the Sri Lankan hotel said.
"There was utter chaos," said the manager, who spoke to AFP on condition of anonymity as he is not allowed to speak for the company.
The Taprobane restaurant at the hotel was having one of its busiest days of the year for the Easter holiday weekend.
"It was 8:30am and it was busy. It was families," the manager told AFP. "He came up to the top of the queue and set off the blast," he added. "One of our managers who was welcoming guests was among those killed instantly."
The bomber also died. Parts of his body were found intact by police and taken away.
Other hotel officials told how the bomber, a Sri Lankan, checked in giving an address that turned out to be false, saying he was in the city for business.
Two other hotels, the Shangri-La and the Kingsbury, were hit at about the same time, along with three churches packed with worshippers attending Easter Sunday services.
The blast at St Anthony's Shrine, a historic Catholic Church, was so powerful that it blew out much of the roof, leaving roof tiles, glass and splintered wood littering the floor that was strewn with bodies.
Authorities have not said who staged the attacks. But all suffered major casualties and damage. Many of the 35 foreigners killed in the blasts were at the hotels, officials said.
Thawheed Jamaat, group active in Tamil Nadu, prime suspect behind Sri Lanka blasts
[TimesofIndia] The eight serial blasts that shook Sri Lanka on Easter and reverberated around the world have drawn attention to an arc of radicalisation stretching from the Maldives to Bangladesh where Islamic State
...formerly ISIS or ISIL, depending on your preference. Before that al-Qaeda in Iraq, as shaped by Abu Musab Zarqawi. They're very devout, committing every atrocity they can find in the Koran and inventing a few more. They fling
Allaharound with every other sentence, but to hear the pols talk they're not
reallyMoslems....
-inspired modules have been regularly linked to terror incidents.
Though counter-intelligence experts are cautious in the absence of an acknowledgement, topping the shortlist of suspects is Thawheed Jamaat, a hardline group with a significant presence in Tamil Nadu too.
| The spectacular scale bears the IS signature and is in keeping with the desire of jihadi groups from Al Qaeda to IS, and including variants like Lashkar and Jaish, to stage attacks that serve to intimidate enemies and attract recruits. |
The attacks, in their operationalisation, seem similar to the Holey Artisan Bakery suicide kaboom in Dhaka in 2016, which was carried out by local boys but trained by Islamic State. The spectacular scale bears the IS signature and is in keeping with the desire of jihadi groups from Al Qaeda to IS, and including variants like Lashkar and Jaish, to stage attacks that serve to intimidate enemies and attract recruits. Maldives, with the dubious distinction of having one of the highest number of IS fighters, has been a source of worry. Apart from terrorist acts, the deeper radicalisation due to IS messaging is a serious challenge to social stability.
Whether the Thawheed has made the leap into suicide kabooms is not clear and will await investigation even though the scale of the attacks might indicate that jihadi terrorism has made a major landfall in Sri Lanka. SLTJ’s activities have triggered a Buddhist backlash which has resulted in some tension between Buddhists and Moslems, including recent attacks against Buddha statues in the country.
Since the attack on Sunday was specifically directed against Christians on a holy day, the likelihood of the event being part of a bigger Islamist jihad is not ruled out.
The initial assessment is that the attack was likely to have been carried out by radicalised Lankan Moslems. But counter-terrorism specialists say it would be difficult for a local group to carry out coordinated attacks of the magnitude seen yesterday without the help of an outside terror force.