UPDATED: Sri Lankan bombing investigation concentrates on little known Islamist group
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As the death toll from the Easter Sunday bombings in Sri Lanka continues to increase, reports are indicating that investigators are focusing on the National Thowheeth Jama’ath, a little-known group that security experts said promotes Islamist terrorist ideology.
On the other hand cabinet spokesman Rajitha Senaratne said that the government does not believe these attacks were carried out by a group of people who were confined solely to Sri Lanka.
“There was an international network without which these attacks could not have succeeded.”
A later statement said President Maithripala Sirisena would ask for foreign help to track down the international links to the attackers.
“The intelligence reports [indicate] that foreign terrorist organisations are behind the local terrorists. Therefore, the president is to seek the assistance of the foreign countries,” his office said.
In the meantime, a government investigator said the coordinated Easter Sunday bombings that ripped through Sri Lankan churches and luxury hotels were carried out by seven suicide bombers. Police spokesman Ruwan Gunasekara said Monday that most attacks were by one bomber, with two at Colombo’s Shangri-La Hotel.
So far, this radical Muslim group in Sri Lanka was linked last year to the vandal attacks on Buddhist statues.
Days before the attacks, a Sri Lankan police official sent an advisory to the security authorities warning of a possible threat to churches by National Thowheeth Jama’ath.
Sri Lanka’s police chief Pujuth Jayasundara issued an intelligence alert to top officers 10 days ago, warning that suicide bombers planned to hit “prominent churches”. “A foreign intelligence agency has reported that the NTJ (National Thowheeth Jama’ath) is planning to carry out suicide attacks targeting prominent churches as well as the Indian high commission in Colombo,” the alert said.
The walk clock of St. Anthony’s Church in Kochchikade, Colombo – the site of the first blast – that stopped from the force of the blast at the exact time of the attack 08:45 am.
Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe said on Sunday that he and other top government officials had not been informed of the threat, and that “we must look into why adequate precautions were not taken”.
No one has claimed responsibility for the suicide attacks, which killed at least 290 people, and the Sri Lankan authorities have so far not identified any group as being behind them, even though there have 24 arrests.
Police said the death toll from the Easter Sunday bombings in Sri Lanka has increased to 290 and more than 500 people had been wounded.
In the meantime it has been revealed that an explosive device was found and defused late Easter Sunday on an access road to the international airport near Colombo.
The discovery came after nine bomb attacks shook Colombo and its outskirts.
Air Force Group Captain Gihan Seneviratne said Monday that authorities found a “home-made” pipe bomb filled with 50 kilograms of explosives Sunday night in Andiambalama, near the airport.
It’s not clear what kind of detonation method or target was planned, but Seneviratne said the bomb was large enough to have caused damage to a 400-meter radius.
Also, three police officers were killed during a search at a suspected safe house on the outskirts of Colombo when its occupants apparently detonated explosives to prevent arrest, authorities said.
