Easter blasts: Why were warnings ignored?
The death toll in the Easter Sunday terrorist attacks in Sri Lanka is now 290, with an estimated 500 people wounded.
Defence Minister Ruwan Wijewardena described the bombings as a terrorist attack by religious extremists, and police said 13 suspects were arrested, though there was no immediate claim of responsibility. Wijewardena said most of the blasts were believed to have been suicide attacks.
On Monday afternoon (NZ time), the BBC reported that the death toll had climbed markedly from 215 to 290.
Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe acknowledged the Government had ‘‘prior information’’ of attacks on churches involving a little-known local Islamist group but didn’t do enough about it.
The explosions at three churches and three hotels – most of them in or around Colombo, the capital – collapsed ceilings and blew out windows, killing worshippers and hotel guests in one scene after another of smoke, blood, broken glass, screams and wailing alarms. Victims were carried out of blood-spattered pews.
‘‘People were being dragged out,’’ said Bhanuka Harischandra, of Colombo, a 24-year-old founder of a tech marketing company who was going to the city’s Shangri-La Hotel for a meeting when it was bombed. ‘‘People didn’t know what was going on. It was panic mode.’’
He added, ‘‘There was blood everywhere.’’
Most of those killed were Sri Lankans.
But the three hotels and one of the churches, St. Anthony’s Shrine, are frequented by foreign tourists, and Sri Lankan officials said the bodies of at least 32 foreigners from a variety of countries were recovered.
Three Indians, three Danes, five Britons, ‘‘several’’ US citizens and a Dutch national were killed, their governments said.
Sri Lanka’s Tourism Board also said nationals from China, Belgium, Japan, Turkey, Bangladesh, Pakistan and Portugal were killed.
Wickremesinghe said he feared the massacre could trigger instability in Sri Lanka, a country of about 21 million people, and vowed to ‘‘vest all necessary powers with the defence forces’’ to take action against those responsible.
French news agency Agence France Presse reported it had seen documents showing Sri Lanka’s police chief Pujuth Jayasundara issued an intelligence alert to top officers 10 days ago, warning that suicide bombers planned to hit ‘‘prominent churches’’.
He cited a foreign intelligence service as reporting that a littleknown Islamist group was involved.
Wickremsinghe called for an inquiry into how the information was used, and also said the government needs to look at the international links of a local militant group.
Sri Lankan authorities flicked the off switch on most social media after the attacks, a dramatic reaction that reflects accumulated distrust in the capability of American internet companies to control harmful content.
The block on social media including Facebook and its WhatsApp and Instagram services was announced by the government’s official news portal, which cited the spread of ‘‘false news reports’’ online.
The NetBlocks observatory said it detected an intentional blackout of the popular platforms as well as YouTube, Snapchat and Viber. Twitter appeared unaffected.
Officials likely feared that the spread of inflammatory content could provoke more bloodshed in Sri Lanka, a Buddhist-majority island nation that has large Hindu, Muslim and Christian minorities and a long history of ethnic and sectarian conflict.
Ivan Sigal, head of the internet and journalism advocacy organisation Global Voices, said the country’s rapid action was a ‘‘telling moment.’’
‘‘A few years ago we’d be using these platforms to help each other and co-ordinating assistance. Now we view them as a threat,’’ he wrote on Twitter.
‘‘If I were Facebook and WhatsApp I’d take a moment to ask myself where I’d gone wrong,’’ he said. ‘‘Cannot think of a clearer signal for lack of platform trust.’’ – Agencies