International terrorist link to bombers
COLOMBO: Seven suicide bombers took part in the attacks on churches and luxury hotels in Sri Lanka that killed 290 people and wounded more than 500, an investigator said yesterday, while a government spokesman said an international network was involved.
Two of the suicide bombers blew themselves up at the luxury ShangriLa Hotel on Colombo’s seafront, Ariyananda Welianga, a senior official at the Government’s forensic division, said. The others targeted three churches and two other hotels.
A fourth hotel and a house in a suburb of the capital Colombo were also targeted, but it was not immediately clear how those attacks were carried out.
‘‘Still the investigations are going on,’’ Welianga said.
There was no claim of responsibility for the Easter Sunday attacks, which mainly took place during church services or when hotel guests were sitting down for buffet breakfasts.
‘‘Guests who had come for breakfast were lying on the floor, blood all over,’’ an employee at Kingsbury Hotel, one of those targeted, said.
Cabinet spokesman Rajitha Senaratne said an international network was involved in the terrorist attacks, but did not elaborate.
An Australian survivor, identified only as Sam, told Australia’s 3AW radio the hotel was a scene of ‘‘absolute carnage’’.
He said he and a travel partner were having breakfast at the ShangriLa when two blasts went off. He said he had seen two men wearing backpacks seconds before the blasts.
The president, Maithripala Sirisena, said in a statement the country would seek foreign assistance to track the international links.
The Sri Lankan military, who were clearing the route from Colombo airport late on Sunday in preparation for the return of President Sirisena from an overseas visit, found a crude bomb near the departure gate, an air force spokesman said.
A domestic intelligence report dated April 11 seen by Reuters said a foreign intelligence agency had warned Sri Lankan authorities of possible attacks.
Four of the bombs went off at about 8.45am, sand two others came within 20 minutes. The explosions at the fourth hotel and the house were in the afternoon.
Most of the dead and wounded were Sri Lankans although government officials said 32 foreigners were killed, including British, US, Turkish, Indian, Chinese, Danish, Dutch and Portuguese nationals.
Denmark’s richest man Anders Holch Povlsen and his wife lost three of their four children in the attacks, a spokesman for Povlsen’s fashion firm said.
The US State Department said in a travel advisory ‘‘terrorist groups’’ were continuing to plot possible attacks in Sri Lanka.