Around 359 people have died in Sri Lanka blasts which took place on Easter Sunday. As the country is trying to cope up with the tragic incident, government is making sure that they arrest the culprits and so far many suspects have been nabbed in connection with the blasts. Many experts are debating that the blasts occurred due to bad intelligence mechanism as high-profile government officials could not prevent the attack from occurring though they had intel inputs.
The blasts marked the deadliest slew of attacks witnessed by the country since the end of a civil war a decade ago. Three churches in Kochchikade, Negombo and Batticaloa were the primary targets, along with three high-profile hotels of Shangri-La, Kingsbury and Cinnamon Grand hotel in Colombo.
Here are top 5 developments so far
Islamic State has taken the responsibility of the attack
Sri Lankan minister made a shocking revelation that the country’s intelligence chiefs deliberately hid information on the attacks. This comes a day after a Reuters report claimed India had alerted Sri Lanka ‘two hours before the blasts’.
Out of nine attackers, one was a women who detonated the explosives, Defence Minister Ruwan Wijewardene said, adding that as per information available to them, one of the suicide bombers studied in the United Kingdom and later did his postgraduate studies in Australia before coming back and settling down in Sri Lanka.
Around 359 people lost their lives, and from them 39 were foreigners. As of now, 17 bodies of foreigners have been identified and handed over to their families.
The US ambassador to Sri Lanka today denied that the United States had prior knowledge of the attacks, CNN television news channel said. “I can’t speak for others. I don’t know what other sources of information the government of Sri Lanka might have had. I can just tell you that we had no prior knowledge,” the news channel quoted him as saying.