More than 200 die in blasts on Easter Sunday
SRI LANKA, Colombo - More than 200 people were killed and hundreds more wounded in eight bomb blasts that rocked churches and luxury hotels in Sri Lanka on Easter Sunday — the deadliest violence the South Asian island country has seen since a bloody civil war ended a decade ago.
Defense Minister Ruwan Wijewardena described the bombings as a terrorist attack by religious extremists, and police said 13 suspects were arrested, though there was no immediate claim of responsibility. Wijewardena said most of the blasts were believed to have been suicide attacks.
The explosions at three churches and three hotels — most of them in or around Colombo, the capital — collapsed ceilings and blew out windows, killing worshippers and hotel guests in one scene after another of smoke, blood, broken glass, screams and wailing alarms. Victims were carried out of blood-spattered pews.
“People were being dragged out,” said Bhanuka Harischandra of Colombo, a 24-year-old founder of a tech marketing company who was going to the city’s Shangri-La Hotel for a meeting when it was bombed. “People didn’t know what was going on. It was panic mode.”
He added, “There was blood everywhere.”
Most of those killed were Sri Lankans. But the three hotels and one of the churches, St Anthony’s Shrine, are frequented by foreign tourists, and Sri Lanka’s foreign ministry said the bodies of at least 27 foreigners from a variety of countries were recovered. The United States said “several” American were among the dead, while Britain and China said they, too, lost citizens.
Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe said he feared the massacre could trigger instability in Sri Lanka, a country of about 21 million people, and vowed to “vest all necessary powers with the defense forces” to take action against those responsible.
The government imposed a nationwide curfew from 6 p.m. to 6 a.m. and blocked Facebook and other social media, saying it needed to curtail the spread of false information and ease tension.
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