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Sri Lanka Explosions: Local Extremist Group behind Attack, 87 Bomb Detonators Found

Sri Lanka Explosions: Local Extremist Group behind Attack, 87 Bomb Detonators Found
folder_openAsia-Pacific... access_time4 years ago
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By Staff, Agencies

Seven suicide bombers took part in the devastating attacks on churches and luxury hotels in Sri Lanka that killed at least 290 people and wounded more than 500, a senior investigator said on Monday (April 22).

Two of the suicide bombers blew themselves up at the luxury Shangri-La Hotel on Colombo’s seafront, said Ariyananda Welianga, a senior official at the government’s forensic division.

The others targeted three churches and two other hotels.

A fourth hotel and a house in a suburb of the capital Colombo were also targeted, but it was not immediately known how the attacks were carried out.

“Still the investigations are going on,” Welianga said.

The Easter Sunday attacks mainly took place during church services or at hotel breakfast buffets.

Four of the bombs went off at roughly the same time, at 8.45 am local time, with two others coming within 20 minutes. The explosions at the fourth hotel and the house were in the afternoon.

There was no claim of responsibility, but the government believes a local extremist group called the National Tawheed Jamaath (NTJ) was behind the attacks, government spokesman Rajitha Senaratne said on Monday.

Senaratne, who is also a Cabinet minister, added that the government was investigating whether the group had “international support”.

Documents seen by AFP show Sri Lanka’s police chief issued a warning on April 11, saying that a “foreign intelligence agency” had reported NTJ was planning attacks on churches and the Indian high commission.

Not much is known about the NTJ, a radical group that has been linked to the vandalizing of Buddhist statues.

A police source told AFP that all 24 people in custody in connection with the attacks belong to an “extremist” group, but did not specify further. All 24 are Sri Lankans.

Sri Lankans accounted for the bulk of the dead and wounded Sunday's attacks, although government officials said 32 foreigners were killed, including British, US, Turkish, Indian, Chinese, Danish, Dutch and Portuguese nationals.

President Maithripala Sirisena will declare a nationwide emergency from midnight on Monday, his office said.

“The government has decided to gazette the clauses related to prevention of terrorism to emergency regulation and gazette it by midnight,” the president’s media unit said in a statement. It said the measure would be confined to dealing with terrorism and would not impinge on freedom of expression.

The government has imposed a new curfew from 8pm on Monday to 4am local time on Tuesday, according to the police. A Sunday night curfew was lifted on Monday morning.

Relatedly, Sri Lankan police found 87 bomb detonators at the main bus station in the capital, Colombo, on Monday, a spokesman said, a day after suicide bombers attacked churches and hotels killing 290 people and wounding about 500.

The government also blocked access to social media and messaging sites, including Facebook and WhatsApp, making information hard to gather.

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