Bombers stayed night in hotels, tucked into breakfast then blew up fellow guests

Captured in chilling CCTV images, Sri Lanka suicide bomber poses as an Easter tourist before turning buffet restaurant into a scene of appalling carnage

night before, he appeared to be just another guest checking in at hotel reception during the busy Easter season.

But the next morning, an unassuming figure – marked out only by the rucksack on his back – emerged from his room, coolly strode into the breakfast buffet area and blew himself up, killing the innocents all around him.

These chilling CCTV images show one of the nine terrorists who claimed at least 250 lives in simultaneous suicide attacks in Sri Lanka on Easter Sunday.

The co-ordinated atrocity left a further 500 people injured in explosions at three churches and three luxury hotels.

Islamic State has since claimed responsibility. In the latest developments in one of the deadliest terTHE rorist attacks the world has seen, The Irish Mail on Sunday can reveal:

The family company of the millionaire brothers who were among the attackers sold spices in Britain;

One of the bombers was part of the same group as notorious IS executioner Jihadi John;

Eyewitnesses revealed how a terrorist ate breakfast just before blowing himself up.

Our pictures show a terrorist, later identified as Abul Mukhtar, at the five-star Kingsbury Hotel in Colombo. It has now emerged that he checked in and slept at the hotel before calmly carrying out his deadly mission. And with equally blood-curdling cool at the Cinnamon Grand hotel, another terrorist, Inshaf Ibrahim, even sat down and ate breakfast alongside those he was about to murder.

Among the dead were a British couple on holiday – GP Sally Bradley, 56, and her husband, retired fireman Bill Harrop – and a British IT director, Lorraine Campbell, 55, who was on a business trip. Rohan Karr, the Cinnamon Grand’s manager, said: ‘Ibrahim behaved like a normal customer. He walked in the night before, he checked in, and we served him a welcome drink.

‘He went up to his room and he came down in the morning with a rucksack on his back.’

Mr Karr said Ibrahim aroused suspicion as he carried his rucksack with him all the time, even as he filled his plate with food.

He also callously chose to sit at a table in the middle of the restaurant to kill the maximum number of diners. Mr Karr said: ‘A staff member watched this and they were wondering why this guy was walking with his bag. He sat, he ate, he waited for people to gather towards the buffet. When he saw a bigger crowd, that’s the time he decided this is the time for me to create maximum damage.’

The manager revealed five of his staff were killed, including one woman who swapped her shift so that her Christian co-worker could attend Easter Mass. Mr Karr recalled the horror of seeing dead bodies strewn everywhere around the restaurant. He said: ‘Bodies, body parts were all over the place – even in the pond there was a hand. And we had to take a 6ft table, break the legs and put the people on that and carry that to take them out of the restaurant.’

Of the eight Britons who were killed in the attack, five died at the Shangri La hotel as they ate breakfast – among them were Anita Nicholson, 41, her son, Alex, 14, and daughter Annabel, 11. The family, from Upminster, Essex, were on holiday with Mrs Nicholson’s lawyer husband, Ben, who survived.

Matthew Linsey, a City fund manager from Kensington, West London, was also having breakfast with his family. His son Daniel, 19, and daughter Amelie, 15, died in the blast. It is believed that two suicide bombers struck the Shangri La, including cell leader Moulvi Zahran Hashim. The other suicide bomber is believed to

‘He waited for people to gather at the buffet’