ISIS: WE DID IT
But Sri Lanka big sez bombs ‘revenge’ for N.Z.
The horror in Sri Lanka was either an ISIS plot or a horrific act of revenge, depending on who is telling the story.
As the death toll from the Easter Sunday bombings in Sri Lanka continued to climb Tuesday, a top official offered an extraordinary theory for the attack, while ISIS claimed responsibility for it.
Ruwan Wijewardene, the state minister of defense, called the blasts that killed at least 321 people in hotels, Catholic churches and other sites “retaliation” by Islamic fundamentalists for last month’s mosque shootings in New Zealand, but offered no evidence for his claims. The New Zealand massacre, carried out by a white supremacist gunman from Australia, left 50 people from multiple nationalities dead in Christchurch on March 15 — the worst mass shooting in that country’s history.
Moments after Wijewardene’s claim Tuesday, ISIS’ news agency Amaq said Sunday’s attacks were carried out by “fighters of the Islamic State.” The agency released an image purported to show the leader of the attackers, standing with seven others whose faces are covered. The group did not provide any other evidence for its claim, and the identities of those depicted in the image were not independently verified.
The coordinated bombings targeted Christian churchgoers and tourists in the capital, Colombo, and elsewhere. More than 500 people were wounded in what has been described as the worst terrorist attack the Asian country has seen since its brutal, 26-year civil war ended a decade ago.
Sri Lanka is a Buddhist-majority country with large Muslim, Hindu and Christian minorities. Authorities have blamed the attacks on at least one domestic militant group, the National Thowfeek Jamaath, which they believed received help from international terror groups. Forty suspects have been arrested, but the prime minister said Tuesday there is still an active threat in the country and that authorities continue to search for explosives and militants.
Two U.S. officials told CNN that a key suspect has ties to international organizations, including ISIS. Investigators are trying to determine what role ISIS may have played in the attacks.
A video reportedly showing one of the suicide bombers emerged online Tuesday. The video, which was shared by CNN and multiple Sri Lankan news outlets, shows a young man with a large backpack going into St. Sebastian’s church in Negombo, one of the three churches attacked Sunday.
At least four of the fatalities were Americans, the U.S. Department of State said Monday, without confirming any names. Two of them are believed to be Dieter Kowalski, a Denver man who was in Sri Lanka for a business trip, and Kieran Shafritz de Zoysa, a fifth-grade student from Washington, D.C., who was spending a year on the island.
Sri Lankan officials admitted receiving warnings from international intelligence agencies about a potential terror attack on Easter, but they failed to act on those threats and even kept Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe in the dark, likely because of an internal dispute between him and President Maithrela Sirisena. The president tried firing Wickremesinghe in October and has since banned him from attending Security Council meetings.