70 IS suspects held after bombings: Sirisena

IANS  |  Colombo 

Sri Lankan on Friday said that there were as many as 140 Islamic State suspects in the country and 70 of them have already been held after the Sunday bombings.

"I will stamp out IS from Our police and security forces are capable of achieving this," he said, adding that the country would also take assistance from other nations to fight the terror group.

said the person who led the attacks on Sunday had been identified as Mohamed Zahran, who died in a blast in the in

He said he belonged to local Islamist outfit National Thowheed Jamaath, which was earlier blamed for the attacks.

Sirisena blamed security officials and promised action against those officials who "neglected" their duties.

He also announced that of Police (IGP) Pujith Jayasundara, who was asked to quit over mishandling intelligence reports ahead of the bombings, will resign later in the day,

While reiterating that both Jayasundara and the outgoing Hemasiri Fernando, who resigned on Thursday, did not fulfil their responsibilities, the said there would be "a total reorganization (of) the security establishment in the days to come".

The warned of a close relationship between extremism and drug-trafficking, which the government has tried to tackle through several controversial measures in recent months.

has drawn flak for its failure to prevent the attacks despite intelligence warnings indicating the threat of bombings.

The country has been in a state of emergency after suicide bombers hit three luxury hotels in and three churches around the country during services in a series of coordinated attacks.

A few hours later, a seventh blast rocked a small hotel about 12 km south of the capital while an eighth explosion took place at a residential compound in Dematagoda in

Police have said at least nine suicide bombers loaded with powerful explosives carried out the attacks.

On Thursday, reduced the death toll in the Sunday bombings to 253 - almost a hundred less than previously feared.

The revised toll came after the authorities said there was an error in calculating the number of victims.

--IANS

ksk/mr

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)

First Published: Fri, April 26 2019. 13:56 IST