Suicide blasts kill over 280 in Sri Lanka
Official says police were warned of attacks on Catholic churches, hotels 10 days ago
The clock hands on the steeple of St. Anthony’s Shrine were stuck at 8:45 a.m., the exact moment when the first suicide bomber’s explosion ripped through the wooden pews as Easter Sunday worshippers were praying.
Minutes later a second suicide blast shattered the Sunday brunch tranquility at the Shangri-la Hotel’s Table One Restaurant, a favorite of foreign tourists.
Within a few hours on Sunday, suicide bombings hit three Catholic churches and three upscale hotels in the Indian Ocean island nation of Sri Lanka, still recovering from a quarter-century civil war in which the suicide bomb was pioneered.
More than 280 people were killed and at least 450 wounded in the bombings, which the finance minister, Mangala Samaraweera, called “a wellcoordinated attempt to create murder, mayhem and anarchy.”
By day’s end, police said at least 13 people had been arrested
in connection with the attacks in the capital, Colombo, and the cities of Negombo and Batticaloa. Seven of them were seized at a hideout after one suspect blew himself up, killing three officers.
There was no immediate claim of responsibility. Police said they believed the bombings were the work of one group but declined to identify it.
At least 35 of the victims were foreigners, including several Americans. For years, as Sri Lanka has climbed away from war, it has been building a robust tourism industry.
The bombings were the deadliest attack on Christians in South Asia in recent memory and punctuated a rising trend of religious-based violence in the region.
The St. Anthony’s Shrine blast left a scene of broken bodies, billowing black smoke and splintered wood. “It was a river of blood,” said N.A. Sumanapala, a shopkeeper near the church who said he had run inside to help.
“Ash was falling like snow,” he said. “I saw limbs and heads. There were children, too.”
The shock of the bombings and the anger they generated was compounded by news that a top police official had alerted security officials 10 days earlier about a threat to churches from a radical Islamist group, National Thowheeth Jama’ath. It was unclear what precautions, if any, had been taken, or whether that group had played any role in the assaults.
Sri Lanka’s prime minister, Ranil Wickremesinghe, pointedly said he and other ministers had not been warned, in what appeared to be a sign of the recent frictions within the government hierarchy.
“We must look into why adequate precautions were not taken,” he said at a news conference. For now, he said, “the priority is to apprehend the attackers.”
The bombings came as Christians and other religious groups have been increasingly targeted in South Asia, where a mix of surging nationalism, faith-based identity politics and social media rumor mongering has created a combustible atmosphere.
While Sri Lanka has suffered political instability and sporadic attacks since its civil war ended in 2009, there has been nothing on this scale. “It has been 10 years since we last saw this kind of horror,” said Hemasiri Fernando, the secretary to the Ministry of Defense.
News of the bombings rippled out all Easter morning, interrupting celebrations across the world in a week where Christians were still grieving over the devastating fire at Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris.
Pope Francis, after celebrating Mass in St. Peter’s Square, said the attacks had “brought mourning and sorrow” on the most important of Christian holidays. Other world leaders also expressed shock.
By Sunday afternoon, Colombo was under a tight lockdown. Elsewhere in the country, soldiers shut down roads, a jittery government imposed a duskto-dawn curfew and all police officers were ordered back to duty, their leaves canceled. Bus companies banned all baggage for fear of hidden bombs.
At nightfall, few cars moved on the streets and almost nobody ventured outside.
The government temporarily blocked major social media and messaging services, including Facebook and Whatsapp, to prevent the spread of misinformation online, according to the president’s secretary, Udaya Seneviratne.
After the first blasts, panic quickly spread to other churches, which halted or canceled Easter services.
“Our phones were on silent, but one guy got a text about the bomb blast,” said Ranil Thilkaratne, who was at a service in the Colombo suburb of Nugegoda. “Then he alerted the priest. We stopped the service and moved out.”
Sri Lanka is predominantly Buddhist, with Hindus the largest minority, about 12%, followed by Muslims at less than 10%. About 6% of the population is Catholic, according to government figures.
The country has struggled with sectarian divisions, including last year, when the government temporarily shut down Facebook and Whatsapp in an effort to curb anti-muslim violence.
On Sunday, the prime minister, Wickremesinghe, warned the public not to believe what he described as false information circulating online about the bombings.