Police raid Islamist group suspected of suicide bombings
KATTANKUDY, Sri Lanka: Sri Lankan armed police yesterday launched a search of the headquarters of an Islamist group, National Thawheedh Jamaath, suspected of being behind the suicide bombings on churches and hotels that killed more than 250 people, a Reuters witness said.
The raid took place at the NTJ’s base in the eastern town of Kattankudy a day after the group was banned under new emergency laws.
Police believe that Zahran Hashim, the alleged mastermind of the Easter Sunday attacks, led the group or a splinter faction to mount the attacks in Colombo as well as a church in Batticaloa in the east.
The Islamic State group on Saturday claimed responsibility for three men who blew themselves up in clashes with Sri Lankan police, the militant group said in a statement.
The men set off explosives after an hour-long gun battle with police Saturday, inside what was believed to be a jihadist hideout near the eastern town of Kalmunai, in the latest fallout from the Easter attacks.
In a statement posted Saturday by the IS propaganda unit the Amaq News Agency, IS said the three men were part of the Islamic State group and detonated their bombs after the fight with police.
The statement said the men ‘clashed with them (Sri Lankan police) with automatic weapons, and after exhausting their ammunition, detonated on them their explosive belts.’ Fifteen people died in the clashes, police said, including three women and six children.
The violence came six days after the Easter Day bombings on three churches and three luxury hotels which killed at least 253 people and injured 500.
Security forces armed with emergency powers have stepped up search operations for Islamic extremists since the bombings.
Kalmunai is in the same region as the home town of the jihadist Zahran Hashim who founded the group accused of staging the attacks. — AFP