Seven suicide bombers took part in the attacks on churches and luxury hotels in Sri Lanka that killed 290 people and wounded more than 500, an investigator said on Monday, while a government spokesman said an international network was involved.
SUICIDE BOMBERS
Two of the suicide bombers blew themselves up at the luxury Shangri-La Hotel on Colombo’s seafront, said Ariyananda Welianga, a senior official at the government’s forensic division. The others targeted three churches and two other hotels. A fourth hotel and a house in a suburb of the capital Colombo were also targeted, but it was not immediately clear how those attacks were carried out. “Still the investigations are going on,” spokesman said.
There was no claim of responsibility for the Easter Sunday attacks, which mainly took place during church services or when hotel guests were sitting down for breakfast buffets. “Guests who had come for breakfast were lying on the floor, blood all over,” an employee at Kingsbury Hotel said. “We just picked up everyone, dead or alive and evacuated them.”
Cabinet spokesman Rajitha Senaratne said an international network was involved, but did not elaborate. “We do not believe these attacks were carried out by a group of people who were confined to this country,” Senaratne said. “There was an international network without which these attacks could not have succeeded.”