Our live coverage of the Sri Lanka Easter Sunday bombings and developing investigation has moved here.
The US says it did not provide Sri Lanka with advance intelligence regarding imminent attacks prior to Easter Sunday, the US Ambassador to Sri Lanka Alaina Teplitz told CNN’s Christiane Amanpour Tuesday.
Why this matters: This contradicts what the Sri Lankan government said. Sri Lankan government minister Harsha de Silva told CNN Monday that advance intelligence had been provided by “both India and the United States.”
When presented with this claim, Ambassador Teplitz denied it.
“We had no prior knowledge of these attacks,” the ambassador said, adding, “the Sri Lankan government has admitted lapses in their intelligence gathering and information sharing.”
When Amanpour asked her about de Silva’s claim, Teplitz responded:
Sri Lanka woke up Tuesday to a day of mourning following the deadly hotel and church attacks on Easter Sunday.
It’s now almost 9 p.m. in the country. Here’s what we know about the attacks, the suspects and the investigation:
The deadly attacks that rocked Sri Lanka on Easter Sunday could have been prevented if there hadn’t been a breach in communications, Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe said at a news conference in Colombo on Tuesday.
“I am in touch with the relevant officials,” he said, adding that the Sri Lanka’s president has also launched an inquiry “as to why the information did not reach my office.”
Wickremesinghe said investigators are making “good progress” in regards to identifying the suspects “but they need to identify all the culprits and look at what their network is.”
He said the attackers had foreign links and some have traveled abroad. “This could not have been done just locally,” he said, adding that the attackers have been training “in coordination which we have not seen earlier.”
Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe just held a news conference about Sunday’s attacks at churches and hotels across Sri Lanka.
Asked if there are currently active threats in the country, the prime minister told reporters that there are “still people on the run with explosives.”
He said he doesn’t know how many people are on the run.
The Sri Lankan government’s failure to act on intelligence it received about potential terrorist attacks ahead of the Easter Sunday bombings was “criminally negligent,” a former senior police official told CNN on Tuesday.
Asked about intelligence received from foreign security agencies in advance of Sunday’s attacks, the official said that such specific warnings are “very rare,” and to not act upon the warnings received was “criminally negligent.”
Some background: On Monday, Harsha de Silva, cabinet minister, told CNN that US and Indian intelligence warned Sri Lankan officials before the attacks. Speaking at a news conference in Colombo, a government spokesman apologized for the failure to act on that intelligence.
The former senior police official also said the security services had been aware of the group linked to the attacks, National Tawheed Jamath (NTJ), for at least two years.
He said the group emerged in the eastern province of Sri Lanka, and was linked to the vandalizing of Buddhist statues. He said there were indications that the group was growing in size and extremism, and estimated that there are about 100 to 150 members currently in the country.
Sri Lankan Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe said at a news conference Tuesday that a fourth hotel was a target in the attacks on Sunday, but the attack failed.
Wickremesinghe did not address how the attack was foiled or name the hotel, citing the possibility of hurting the “prospects of people coming there.”
The attack is still under investigation and precautions are being taken, Wickremesinghe said.
Wickremesinghe added that many of the suicide bombers have been identified but not all. He said they are still looking our for more possible suspects. So far, only Sri Lankans have been arrested so far.
Two members of the Sri Lankan national cricket team visited St. Sebastian church in Negombo on Tuesday to pay their respects to those killed in the Easter Sunday attacks.
Fast bowlers Dushmantha Chameera, 27, and Dhammika Prasad, 35, don’t live near the church but told CNN they made a special visit, adding that they were shocked by the attacks.
ISIS has claimed responsibility for the Easter Sunday attacks in Sri Lanka, according to a statement put out by the terrorist group’s news agency Amaq.
“The attackers who targeted citizens of the (anti-ISIS) coalition state members and Christians in Sri Lanka the day before yesterday were fighters of the Islamic State,” the claim stated.
The statement offered no evidence to support the claim, and there is no direct evidence yet that the terror group was involved. Some of their claims have been false in the past.
There was plenty of praise for Sri Lanka’s shutdown of many internet services in the wake of terrorist attacks which rocked the country on Easter Sunday. But little of it came from Sri Lankans, many of whom were cut off from means of communicating with relatives and forced to rely on a government-friendly media for information.
Yudhanjaya Wijeratne, a Colombo-based data and social media researcher, told CNN Business that journalists, activists and policymakers were acting “like hammers looking for nails.”
“The government block of social media is seen as some kind of positive response to curb (Facebook boss Mark) Zuckerberg’s empire, instead of what it actually is – an undemocratic knee-jerk reaction that helps spread fear, uncertainty and doubt,” Wijeratne said.
While the Sri Lankan government has justified the ban on the grounds of tackling “false news reports” and preventing the spread of material which could inflame ethnic tensions, Wijeratne and others have pointed to the role of traditional media in inflaming such tensions in the past.
Read more from James Griffiths’ report here.
All police stations in the Sri Lankan capital of Colombo have been advised to be on high alert for a truck and van suspected to be carrying explosives, a Colombo Police spokesperson told CNN.
Akshat Saraf was vacationing with his wife and young child over the Easter holidays in Sri Lanka. Having enjoyed a restful holiday, the family overslept on Sunday morning in the room on the 25th floor of the Shangri-La Hotel in Colombo.
A few seconds later they heard another boom. Looking out the window, he noticed a group of bystanders turn and start pointing at the building.
“That’s when I realized probably the sound, the explosive noise, did come from our building and I asked my wife to pick up the passports and we immediately left the room.,” said Saraf.
Footage provided to CNN shows a man identified as a suspect by Sri Lanka state TV SLRC walking around St. Sebastian’s church on Easter Sunday morning, shortly before it was rocked by an explosion.
The blast at the crowded service in Negombo was one in a series of coordinated attacks – which targeted churches and luxury hotels within minutes of each other – across the country.
What you can see: The suspect can be seen carrying a large backpack as he makes his way across the courtyard towards where the busy service is already underway.
At one point, the alleged bomber can be seen briefly stopping to pat a child on the head before continuing on his way.
Making his way through the throngs of people perched outside the service, he enters a side door of St. Sebastian’s, close to the altar.
The next frame, according to police but not provided publicly, shows the suspect detonating his bomb.
Sri Lanka police said they would not comment on the video until the conclusion of the investigation.
Islamic extremists carried out Sunday’s coordinated attacks in retaliation for a March attack on two mosques in New Zealand, said Ruwan Wijewardana, the Sri Lankan State Defense Minister.
Addressing parliament today, Wijewardana said that initial investigations showed “the chain of bombings” was carried out by “a radical Islam group” which he named as the National Tawheed Jamath (NTJ).
No group has yet claimed responsibility.
Last month’s mosque attack in Christchurch, New Zealand, saw at least 50 people murdered in a shooting rampage by a white supremacist. The rampage began at lunchtime on a Friday, when mosques were full of worshippers.
Sri Lanka Police tell CNN the death toll has now risen to 321 in the Easter Sunday bombing attacks.
CNN’s Will Ripley is at St. Anthony’s Shrine in Colombo, the scene of one of Sunday’s bombings. It remains an active crime scene and the interior is so badly damaged that investigators haven’t been able to examine it all yet.
Ripley spoke to Fr. Jude Fernando, the administrator of the holy site, who said that when the blast went off around 8.45 a.m., he was in his office and just about to walk into the church.
“I came inside the church and I saw people screaming, crying and I started, with the help of the community, and staff and priest, to send each and every one to the hospital,” he said.
He said the church was packed because it was Easter Sunday – around 1,000 devotees were in attendance, he estimated.
Fernando appealed to Sri Lankan Christians to “please be calm and quiet and pray, because our God is not a god of revenge, he’s a god of love, he’s a god of peace… let’s follow our master and spread the good news.
“Continue to pray for one another, and don’t do any harmful acts,” he said.
Watch the video here.
South Korea joined the US, Australia and China today in cautioning its citizens about travel to Sri Lanka.
The country’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs raised the Sri Lanka travel-alert level to “highly cautious.”
“We ask our citizens who are residing in Sri Lanka to take extra caution and our citizens who plans to travel the region to carefully consider the need to travel,” it said.
From CNN’s Jake Kwon in Seoul
Global headlines about the attacks will have likely delighted the perpetrators, said Anne Speckhard, director of the International Center for the Study of Violent Extremism, who also noted that the coordinated explosions fit the “ISIS and Al Qaeda playbook.”
“They want to make a big press presence, a big statement, here’s what we’re capable of doing, here’s how much we hate you, they even like the backlash, they think it unites Muslims to their cause,” she told CNN.
Speckhard expressed concern that the attacks could inspire copycat actions.
Funerals at St. Sebastian’s Church were suspended today, after services for 16 victims had already taken place. A priest at the church in Negombo, a city to the north of the capital Colombo, told CNN’s Ivan Watson that a funeral procession had been planned, but was stopped. No official explanation has been given.
Bishop Maxwell Silva told Watson that the attacks had changed the dynamic for Sri Lanka’s Christian community and that they “have to talk precautions now.”
He said that new security measures could include developing “our own security system”—for example, “we can ask people not to bring their purses to church.”
“At this time we are speechless. We never had any communal violence,” another church official, Father Cyril Gamini Fernando, told CNN.
He said that because police had asked not to have large crowds of people, “I feel there must be a threat,” and added that he did feel like a target.
Most of the crowds have left the church grounds now, where the funerals had been taking place.
Inside the damaged building, CNN staff could see police personnel in medical scrubs and surgical masks. There are still police lines still around the church compound.
Information provided by Sri Lankan officials linked Sunday’s attack to a small and little-known extremist outfit named National Tawheed Jamath (NTJ).
But, as regional expert Michael Kugelman writes for CNN, “NTJ is no jihadist juggernaut; it’s an entity mostly known for defacing Buddhist statues.” To pull off such a catastrophic attack, it would have needed help, he argues—but from whom?
He continues:
Al-Qaeda and ISIS would be logical partners; both have carried out attacks like Sunday’s in the past. However, these groups have been badly degraded. They do each boast a South Asia affiliate, with some reach beyond the Afghanistan-Pakistan region where they’re largely based.
But they’re not known to have a track record, much less a footprint, in Sri Lanka.
Furthermore, had al-Qaeda or ISIS been involved, one would have expected a claim of responsibility. There was none. For that matter, NTJ didn’t claim credit either.
Several other things don’t make sense. In recent years, Sri Lanka has seen some anti-Muslim sentiment, fueled by Buddhist extremists, and it has led to episodic attacks on Muslim targets. But Sri Lanka doesn’t have a history, past or present, of problems with Islamist radicalization.
Furthermore, if an Islamist radical group wants to stage an attack in Sri Lanka, one would expect it to hit out at the Buddhists with whom Muslims have clashed – and not the Christians targeted in Sunday’s strikes.
Read the rest here.
As the bombing investigation deepens, Sri Lankan politicians are pointing fingers.
The country remains split by a political crisis that began last year, when President Maithripala Sirisena attempted to remove Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe, writes CNN’s James Griffiths in a report on the country’s current state of confusion.
Paikiasothy Saravanamuttu, executive director of the Colombo-based Centre for Policy Alternatives think tank, said that “very clearly the disagreements and tension between the president and prime minister has affected this (situation), to what extent it has needs to be uncovered in the investigation.”
“But clearly all of this should be put aside and there should be unity in terms of investigating and bringing the perpetrators to account,” he said, adding that the continued disputes were “really quite absurd.”
“The government really needs to close ranks and put up a united front, but the damage I think has been done.”
A senior Bangladesh foreign ministry official told CNN that a relative of Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina died in one of the hotel blasts in Colombo.
Eight-year-old Zayan Chowdhury—Hasina’s cousin’s grandson—was eating breakfast with his family at a restaurant in the Shangri-La Hotel when the attack took place, said Preeti Rahman, senior official at the Bangladesh Foreign Ministry. Chowdhury died in the blast.
The boy’s body will be flown to Bangladesh on Wednesday.
Referring to the same death, British MP Tulip Siddiq – PM Sheikh Hasina’s niece – on Monday tweeted saying “I lost a relative today in the Sri Lanka attacks.”
A team from the Australian Federal Police (AFP) will be joining Sri Lanka’s investigation effort, said Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison to CNN affiliate Seven Network.
“AFP and our people are now joining the investigation efforts,” he said. “We’ve made those offers and they’ve been responded to and so we’ll be assisting wherever we can with these investigations.”
He told the Sunrise morning show earlier on Tuesday that there were “still no clear details and evidence of who was responsible” for the attack.
“But we know who was targeted – Christians going to worship on Easter Sunday and many others… particularly westerners but many, many, many Sri Lankans going about their daily business.
“It has been a terrible period of time for Sri Lanka.”
Chinese citizens are advised not to travel to Sri Lanka in light of the recent Easter Sunday bombings, according to a warning posted by China’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the Chinese Embassy in Sri Lanka.
“For Chinese citizens who are already there, please strengthen measures of self-protection and stay away from crowded areas, and follow safety reminders from the Embassy and local news,” the statement reads.
Chinese state media reported that two Chinese citizens, who were cousins, died in the attacks. Family members have identified them, the reports said.
The US State Department and Australia’s Department of Foreign Affairs have also issued revised travel advisories for Sri Lanka.
It is not yet clear why Christian places of worship were targeted in Sunday’s coordinated attacks.
Christianity is a minority religion in Sri Lanka, accounting for 7.4% of the total population of 21.4 million. According to census data, 70.2% of Sri Lankans identify as Buddhist, 12% Hindu and 9.7% Muslim.
Father Ivan, an elderly priest who runs Catholic schools in Colombo, told CNN’s Ivan Watson that he hasn’t seen a mass funeral like the one at St. Sebastian’s Church since 1984, shortly after the outbreak of the country’s bloody civil war.
More than 100 people died during Easter services at the church, which sits at the heart of a close-knit Catholic community near the city of Negombo, one of few areas in the country where Christians are a majority. Everyone in the community knew at least one person killed or injured, witnesses told CNN’s James Griffiths.
CCTV footage provided to CNN of the moments before the attack showed a packed service, with people both inside and outside the church doors listening in. A priest said that the whole church was covered in dust and debris by the blast, which left a scene like a “disaster zone” after it cleared.
Several people interviewed by CNN said the attack seemed to come from nowhere, without any rise in inter-communal tensions or threats against Catholics. The Sri Lankan government has admitted to failing to act on multiple intelligence warnings, however.
Following the blast at the church on Sunday, much of the interior was heavily damaged, as was the church’s red tile roof. Shards of glass could be seen scattered around the church grounds, as workers carried out pews stained with the blood of parishioners and piled up clothes and shoes of the wounded and dead.
Hundreds of mourners, most of whom are wearing white, are somberly filing into the grounds of the damaged St. Sebastian’s Church in Negombo, north of Colombo.
CNN’s Rebecca Wright, who is on the scene, says that as they pass, mourners are paying their respects at one house near the church, the home of one of the victims. Hundreds of people are gathering at the gate of the damaged building, singing funereal hymns.
Security is tight – police line the road on the way to the church, one of three bombed on Easter Sunday.
Mourners are getting body searches by the security forces – a mix of military and different divisions of police – and bags are also being checked at three different checkpoints. The security forces also have sniffer dogs on hand.
A huge, white-roofed, open-sided tent has been erected in the grounds of the church, where church officials are gathered. Pallbearers are bringing coffins of those killed in Sunday’s attacks into the memorial under the white roof.
Police Media Spokesperson SP Ruwan Gunasekara told CNN that “around 40 suspects” have been arrested in connection with the Easter Sunday bombings.
All of those in custody are Sri Lankan, he added.
The US believes it has identified a key operative in the attacks in Sri Lanka and has initially concluded that person has connections to international terrorism organizations, including ISIS, according to two US officials.
The US has a name of that individual and is trying to determine everything it can learn about the person’s nationality and ethnic background in hopes the details may provide more clues about the attack, CNN’s Barbara Starr reports.
The US believes that the attacks in Sri Lanka have “the hallmarks” of an ISIS-inspired attack, in part, due to the complexity of planning multiple attacks and the shocking nature of the violence, according to one of the officials familiar with the initial assessment.
For now, the US is trying to figure out just how involved ISIS may have been in facilitating the attacks, the official said. That includes whether ISIS operatives provided planning, financing, equipment to manufacture the bombs, and whether they met directly with Sri Lankan attackers.
“We are still looking at possible connections and how deep it went,” the official said.
Two days on from the devastating attacks that targeted churches and tourist hotels in Sri Lanka’s capital, Colombo, and two other cities in the island nation, its citizens are still coming to terms with the magnitude of the tragedy. At least 310 people have died, and hundreds more are injured.
On Tuesday, designated an official day of mourning, some of the dead were laid to rest, as the investigation into the widespread attacks continued.
Local police tell CNN that the Easter Sunday bombings have claimed the lives of 310 people. The number is a significant increase on the previously reported death toll.
Police Media Spokesperson SP Ruwan Gunasekara had no further updates on the number of people injured. Previous estimates indicated at least 500 people were injured in the blasts across three churches and several high-end hotels.
A booby-trapped van was found parked a stone’s throw from St. Anthony’s Shrine, one of three churches attacked, CNN’s Ivan Watson reported from Colombo yesterday.
Police detonated the vehicle with a large explosion, sending crowds to scrambling to safety.
Watch the incident, and the reaction of the panicked neighborhood, here.
Sri Lankan President Maithripala Sirisena will meet the foreign ambassadors and high commissioners to brief them on developments and seek international assistance, according to Sri Lanka’s Ministry of Defense.
“The intelligence agencies have reported that there were international organizations behind these acts of local terrorists. Hence, it has been decided to seek international assistance for investigations,” the ministry statement says.
Three children of Danish retail billionaire Anders Holch Povlsen were killed in the attacks on Sunday, according to a spokesperson for his company. Povlsen and his family were reportedly vacationing in the country.
The entrepreneur owns clothing company Bestseller, which is the biggest shareholder in British fashion retailer Asos with a stake of over 26%.
Povlsen is worth $5.7 billion, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index. That makes him the 304th richest person in the world.
The Sri Lankan leader said that the country is mourning as one, days after bombs ripped through eight locations in three cities in the Indian Ocean island nation.
“Today as a nation we mourn the senseless loss of innocent lives this past Easter Sunday,” he tweeted.
“I would like to thank the military and police forces, the medical personnel and all those who have worked bravely and tirelessly without concern for their own safety, to ensure the safety and security of our citizens. It is imperative that we remain unified as Sri Lankans in the face of this unspeakable tragedy.”
Some elements of the government here knew for weeks about potential attacks on churches and tourist destinations.
Intelligence services in India and the US told Sri Lanka of the threat in early April, officials said. One memo compiled by Sri Lankan security officials was so specific that it even gave a list of suspects.
In the run-up to Easter Sunday, the warnings seemed to increase in frequency and urgency.
The government has admitted that it failed to act on the multiple warnings, and government spokesman Rajitha Senaratne said intelligence failures would be investigated.
Read more here.
Australian citizens are being warned to “reconsider” their “need to travel” to Sri Lanka, according to an alert from the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade (DFAT).
The advisory follows a travel warning issued yesterday by the US Department of State, warning travelers that terrorist groups “continue plotting possible attacks in Sri Lanka.”
Australia’s Prime Minister Scott Morrison appeared on Sunrise, CNN affiliate Channel 7’s breakfast television show, on Tuesday and said that a team from Australian Federal Police had been deployed to Sri Lanka to join in with the investigation effort.
During the program Morrison referenced the loss of two Australian citizens while at a church service. A woman and her ten-year-old daughter Alexandria were killed in “the inferno in Negombo,” he said.
A coordinated series of bombings ripped through churches and hotels on Easter Sunday, killing at least 290 people and injuring hundreds more.
