Sri Lankan bombings ‘retaliation for Chch’
The Easter Sunday suicide bombings in Sri Lanka were intended as retaliation for last month’s attack against Muslims in Christchurch, according to initial investigations by the Sri Lankan Government.
‘‘We believe [the massacre] was carried out by an extreme Islamist group as a reprisal to the Christchurch mosque massacre in New Zealand,‘‘ Sri Lanka’s state minister for defence, Ruwan Wijewardene, told Parliament.
At least 321 people were killed in eight separate attacks on Sunday. The explosions took place during busy Easter services at Christian churches in Negombo, Batticaloa and Colombo and in five-star hotels in the capital.
Wijewardene did not offer any evidence for the connection between the Sri Lankan and Christchurch attacks, however, and terrorism researchers have suggested it could have taken months to plan the co-ordinated bombings.
New Zealand’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade has said it is working closely with Sri Lankan authorities as it tries to confirm if any New Zealanders were hurt in the bombings, but it has not yet commented on the claims by Wijewardene.
Sri Lankan police are questioning 40 people over the attacks which officials said were carried out by at least seven suicide bombers. No group has claimed responsibility for the attacks, but Wijewardene blamed a local extremist group thought to have overseas links.
A previously obscure Islamist extremist group known only for vandalising Buddhist statues has emerged as the prime suspect behind suicide bomb attacks that killed close to 300 in Sri Lanka on Easter Sunday.
All seven bombers were Sri Lankan, but the scale and coordination of the attacks has led investigators to decide the homegrown group acted with the help of a more sophisticated international terrorist network, such as Islamic State.
One of the two bombers to strike the Shangri-La hotel in Colombo was identified as Insan Setiawan. A copper factory he owned was raided and nine suspects arrested.
Sri Lankan officials admitted they had been tipped off earlier this month that the National Thowheed Jamath (NTJ) group was due to attack churches, but the warning failed to stop carnage. Three churches and three hotels were devastated in nearly simultaneous blasts across the island that killed at least 290 and wounded around 500.
‘‘We do not believe these attacks were carried out by a group of people who were confined to this country,’’ Rajitha Senaratne, the health minister and cabinet spokesman, said yesterday.
‘‘There was an international -network without which these attacks could not have succeeded.’’
More bombs were destroyed in a controlled explosion yesterday after they were found in a van close to St Anthony’s Shrine, which was attacked on Sunday. Police also found detonators in the capital.
While 36 hours after the blasts there had still been no claim of responsibility, Sri Lankan government sources told The Daily
Telegraph the NTJ was considered the prime suspect. Maithripala Sirisena, the president, awarded the military sweeping wartime powers to arrest and detain suspects.
Sri Lanka is thought to have been tipped off about the possibility of attacks on churches by intelligence from India, which named the NTJ. The newly formed radical Islamist group supporting global jihad had sparked little attention among the crowded field of international terrorist groups, although it had been flagged as violently antiBuddhist, the major religion on the Indian Ocean island.
The sophisticated nature of the multi-pronged assault and the targeting of Christians and Westerners have now raised the possibility the group could have joined forces with global terrorist networks such as IS or al Qaeda on the Indian Subcontinent (AQIS).
The Indians had reportedly become aware of the NTJ as a fertile recruitment ground for IS, said sources in Delhi, although only a few dozen radicalised Sri Lankans are believed to have joined IS in the Middle East, compared with hundreds from the nearby Maldives.
One working hypothesis in Delhi is that the NTJ may have hooked up with returning insurgents from Iraq and Syria. The prospect of attempts by former Asian IS fighters coming home to set up a regional terror hub has long been a fear among security experts. A well-placed security source said the NTJ were believed to have been inspired by IS jihadist attacks.
Analysts have predicted the ‘‘localisation’’ of terrorism, where seemingly insignificant groups are inspired by or merge with powerful global networks, could be the future of jihad in Asia.
‘‘The reality is that inevitably this group has links outside,’’ said Madhav Nalapat, a professor of geopolitics at India’s Manipal University. ‘‘My assessment is that the motivation, the masterminds, are outside the country.
‘‘I think their aim is global, it’s not in Sri Lanka. Wherever they can get a soft spot they hit because they need recruits all the time and the only way that they can get recruits is by doing these kinds of spectacular activities.
‘‘This is essentially a recruiting tool for them.’’
IS made no claim of responsibility for Sunday’s blasts, but its supporters praised the attacks online.
The US-based SITE intelligence group, which monitors online jihadi activities, said IS channels were ‘‘posting rampantly’’ about the explosions and praying ‘‘may Allah accept’’ the dead bombers.
An IS-supporting Indonesian Instagram account had issued a further chilling warning alongside videos of the Sri Lankan bombings, reported SITE, with a message stating ‘‘the Bloody days in your church has begun.’
Of the 290 victims – the vast majority of whom were Sri Lankan citizens – officials said 39 were foreign tourists.
They included the children of Danish billionaire Anders Holch Povlsen, who owns international clothing chain Bestseller, is the largest private landowner in Britain and the largest single shareholder for the popular online fashion retailer Asos.