COLOMBO – A series of eight devastating bomb blasts ripped through high-endhotels and churches holding Easter services in Sri Lanka on Sunday, killingat least 207 people, including dozens of foreigners.
The attacks were the worst act of violence to hit the country in thedecade since the end of a bloody civil war that killed up to 100,000 people.
For many in Sri Lanka, the apparently coordinated attacks brought backpainful memories of life during the long-running conflict, when bomb blastswere a frequent occurrence.
There was no immediate claim of responsibility but the government saideight people had been arrested and investigators would look into whetherthe attackers had “overseas links.”
The government also imposed a nationwide curfew and curbed social mediaaccess to restrict “wrong information” spreading in the country of 21million people.
The powerful blasts — six in quick succession and then two more hourslater — injured hundreds. At least two of them involved suicide bombers, includingone who lined up at a hotel breakfast buffet before unleashing carnage. By Sunday evening, the toll stood at 207 dead and 450people injured.
Police said 35 foreigners were among the dead, including British, Dutch,Portuguese, Chinese and American citizens.
US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo confirmed that “several US citizens” werekilled.
Among the churches targeted was the historic St Anthony’s Shrine, aCatholic church in Colombo, where the blast blew out much of the roof.
Bodies lay on the ground of the church, covered in patterned scarves andwhite sheets, some of them stained with blood.
Shattered roof tiles and shards of glass littered the floor, along withchunks of plaster blasted from the walls by the explosion.
– ‘A lot of fear’ –
Documents seen by AFP show that Sri Lanka’s police chief Pujuth Jayasundaraissued an intelligence alert to top officers 10 days ago, warning thatsuicide bombers planned to hit “prominent churches”.
“A foreign intelligence agency has reported that the NTJ (NationalThowheeth Jama’ath) is planning to carry out suicide attacks targetingprominent churches as well as the Indian high commission in Colombo,” thealert said.
The NTJ is a radical Muslim group in Sri Lanka that was linked last yearto the vandalisation of Buddhist statues.
Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe, speaking late Sunday, acknowledged”information was there” about possible attacks and that an investigationwould look into “why adequate precautions were not taken”.
Rucki Fernando, a Christian Sri Lankan, told AFP: “We haven’t experiencedanything like this in the last 10 years.” “There is a lot of fear, not just in the Christiancommunity, but among everyone.”
– ‘River of blood’ –
Sri Lanka’s Minister of Economic Reforms, Harsha de Silva, described”horrible scenes” at St Anthony’s church.
“I saw many body parts strewn all over,” he tweeted, adding that therewere “many casualties including foreigners”.
Witness N. A. Sumanapala was near the church when the blast happened.
“I ran inside to help. The priest came out and he was covered in blood,” hetold AFP. “It was a river of blood.” A second blast hit St. Sebastian’s Church in Negombo,north of the capital during Easter mass.
Gabriel, who declined to give his family name, told AFP his brother wasinjured in the explosion.
“We are all in shock. We don’t want the country to go back to that darkpast where we had to live in fear of suicide blasts all the time.”
Soon after the first two church blasts, police confirmed that the Zionchurch in the east-coast town of Batticaloa had been hit, along with threehigh-end hotels in the capital — the Cinnamon Grand, the Shangri-La andthe Kingsbury.
A manager at the Cinnamon Grand, near the prime minister’s officialresidence in Colombo, said a suicide bomber blew himself up at the hotel’srestaurant. “He came up to the top of the queue and set off theblast,” he told AFP.
Later in the afternoon, two people died in a strike at a hotel in the southof Colombo, and a suicide bomber killed three police officers as theyraided a house in a northern suburb of the city.
– ‘Horrible’ attacks –
Wickremesinghe urged people to “hold our unity as Sri Lankans” and pledgedto “wipe out this menace once and for all.”
The Archbishop of Colombo, Malcolm Ranjith, described the attackers as”animals” and called on authorities to “punish them mercilessly”.
US President Donald Trump tweeted his condolences about the “horribleterrorist attacks”, and Pope Francis in his Easter address at the Vaticanspoke of his “affectionate closeness with the Christian community, attackedwhile it was at prayer”.
Embassies in Colombo warned their citizens to stay inside, and Sri LankanAirlines told passengers to arrive at the airport four hours ahead offlights because of ramped-up security.
Only around six percent of mainly Buddhist Sri Lanka is Catholic, and thecountry is a patchwork of different religious and ethnic groups, dominatedby Buddhist Sinhalese.
Recent years have seen growing sectarian tensions, including accusationsof hate crimes by extremist Buddhist monks against minority Muslims.
There have been no attacks in Sri Lanka linked to foreign Islamist groups,but in January, Sri Lankan police seized a haul of explosives anddetonators following the arrest of four men from a newly formed radicalMuslim group. -APP/AFP