Police have now arrested 24 people in connection with the blasts.
St. Anthony's Shrine in Colombo after yesterday's attack. Image: Eranga Jayawardena/PA Images St. Anthony's Shrine in Colombo after yesterday's attack. Image: Eranga Jayawardena/PA Images THE DEATH TOLL in a series of eight blasts targeting mostly churches and hotels in Sri Lanka on Easter Sunday has risen to 290, police have said.
Hours later, there were two more blasts — one of them at another Colombo hotel. At least two of the eight were carried out by suicide bombers, according to police sources and a hotel official.Police have said 35 foreigners were among the dead, including British, Dutch, Portuguese, Chinese and American citizens, with the US and the UK later confirming their nationals were killed.A Portuguese man also died, according to the Iberian nation’s LUSA news agency.
The island nation has suffered deadly militant attacks for years, especially by ethnic Tamil militants during a decades-long civil war that ended in 2009 when Sri Lankan forces crushed the insurgency. As Shantha Prasad carried children wounded from the attacks into a Colombo hospital, he said memories of the country’s deadly civil war flooded back.
“Their clothes were torn and drenched in blood. It is unbearable to see this kind of violence again.”Pope Francis expressed his sadness over the attacks during his traditional Easter address at the Vatican. A month after dozens of Muslims were killed in a shooting at two mosques in Christchurch, New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern described the Sri Lanka attack as “devastating”.
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