190 killed, hundreds injured in Easter bombings in Sri Lanka

At least 190 people were killed and hundreds were injured in a series of bombing attacks on several churches and hotels in Sri Lanka throughout Easter Sunday, officials said. Sri Lanka’s defense minister said seven suspects have been arrested.

The first six blasts were triggered almost simultaneously on Sunday morning. Three high-end hotels and one church in the capital, Colombo, were hit, while two additional churches were targeted elsewhere in the country during Easter services, Sri Lankan police said.

Hours later, a seventh explosive was set off near a hotel in Dehawali, just south of Colombo, killing at least two people, and moments after that another bomb was detonated in a northern neighborhood of the capital, killing three, police said.

According to police, the eighth attack was a suicide bombing.

The source, speaking on condition of anonymity, said the suicide bomber detonated his explosives when officers entered a house in a northern suburb of the capital Colombo to carry out a search. Three officers were killed in the blast.

After the second wave of attacks, Sri Lanka’s defense ministry ordered a night-time curfew across the country, and authorities “temporarily” blocked access to social media websites and applications “in order to prevent incorrect and wrong information being spread,” Udaya R. Seneviratne, secretary to the country’s president, said in a statement.

The sites hit in the bombings were all heavily frequented by tourists, and at least 35 foreign nationals were killed in the explosions, police told AFP. A hospital source said Americans, British and Dutch citizens were among the dead.

Sri Lanka’s Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe called the blasts “cowardly” and said the government was working to “contain the situation.”

“I call upon all Sri Lankans during this tragic time to remain united and strong,” he wrote in a tweet.

Leaders from around the world voiced their support for Sri Lanka after the attacks. Israel’s Foreign Ministry said it was not aware of any Israeli victims in the attacks, but was looking into the matter.

There was no immediate claim of responsibility.

Sri Lanka’s police chief issued a nationwide alert 10 days before the bomb attacks that suicide bombers planned to target “prominent churches,” according to the warning seen by AFP.

“A foreign intelligence agency has reported that the NTJ (National Thowheeth Jama’ath) is planning to carry out suicide attacks targeting prominent churches as well as the Indian high commission in Colombo,” said the alert, which was sent by police chief Pujuth Jayasundara to top officers.

The NTJ is a radical Muslim group in Sri Lanka that came to notice last year when it was linked to the vandalization of Buddhist statues.

The first blast ripped through St. Anthony’s Shrine in Colombo.

Alex Agileson, who was in the vicinity, said buildings in the surrounding area shook with the blast.

At least 160 people injured in the St. Anthony’s blast had been admitted to the Colombo National Hospital by mid-morning, an official told AFP.

Another explosion was reported at St. Sebastian’s Church in Negombo, a Catholic-majority town north of Colombo. The church appealed for help on its Facebook page, and posted graphic photographs and videos from the scene.

“A bomb attack to our church, please come and help if your family members are there,” the church wrote.

Photos from the St. Sebastian’s Church circulating on social media showed the roof had been almost blown off in the blast. The floor was littered with a mixture of roof tiles, splintered wood and blood.

Several people could be seen covered in blood, with some trying to help those with more serious injuries.

A church in the town of Batticalao, in the east of the country, was also targeted in the attack, police said.

An official at the Batticaloa hospital told AFP more than 300 people had been admitted to hospitals with injuries following the blast there.

At least one of the victims was killed in Colombo’s Cinnamon Grand Hotel, near the prime minister’s official residence, where the blast ripped through a restaurant, a hotel official told AFP.

The island nation, just off the coast from India, endured a brutal and bloody civil war from 1983 to 2009, when the government declared victory over the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam insurgent group, also known as the Tamil Tigers.

Only around six percent of mainly Buddhist Sri Lanka is Catholic, but the religion is seen as a unifying force because it includes people from both the Tamil and majority Sinhalese ethnic groups.