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Sri Lanka attack death toll rises to 290

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Adam Montana Proficient

Adam Montana

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Link: https://www.cnn.com/asia/live-news/sri-lanka-easter-sunday-explosions-dle-intl/index.html

 

2 hr 57 min ago

It's just past midnight in Sri Lanka. Here's what we know now.

 

3833004f-19bc-423d-8da5-0fb5710f9f30.jpe

The deadly blasts in Sri Lanka on Sunday killed at least 290 people and left hundreds more injured. Monday has been a day of search and rescue, victim identification, and grief and condolences expressed worldwide.

Earlier today, we caught you up on what happened, who the victims are and where the investigation stands.

Here's what we've learned since then:

  • There were six suicide bombers involved in the explosions. So far, 24 people have been arrested in connection to the attacks.
  • The FBI and Interpol are among the global agencies who are stepping in to assist the investigation.
  • The government may have had information about the attacks prior to the bombings. A Sri Lankan government minister claimed that US and Indian governments had warned of "something terrible," but it's unclear if any action was taken.
  • More victims' names and faces are emerging: a fifth-grader from Washington, DC, a British mother and her two children, an education publishing employee from Colorado, the three children of a Danish retail billionaire.

Where things stand now: It's now past midnight in Sri Lanka, and people are off the streets under an emergency island-wide curfew.

The investigation will continue on Tuesday, which has been declared a national day of mourning.

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yota691 Grand Master

yota691

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Funeral ribbons hanging across a road leading to St. Anthony’s Shrine in Colombo, the capital, which remained under a nighttime curfew.CreditCarl Court/Getty Images
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Funeral ribbons hanging across a road leading to St. Anthony’s Shrine in Colombo, the capital, which remained under a nighttime curfew.CreditCreditCarl Court/Getty Images

By Jeffrey Gettleman, Dharisha Bastians and Mujib Mashal

  • April 23, 2019

COLOMBO, Sri Lanka — The Islamic State claimed responsibility on Tuesday for the coordinated suicide bombings on churches and hotels in Sri Lanka, as the president of the traumatized nation promised to dismiss senior officials who had failed to act on warnings about the attacks.

As Sri Lankans buried the dead from the half-dozen Easter Sunday bombings that killed more than 300 people, the Islamic State issued a statement boasting of the suicide assaults. It also distributed an online video showing the person Sri Lankan officials suspect of having led the attacks.

In the video, the man believed to be the chief suspect, Mohammed Zaharan, a little-known extremist preacher from Sri Lanka, leads masked, black-clad disciples pledging fealty to the Islamic State.

There is no direct evidence that the extremist group did more than provide encouragement for the suicide bombings, part of its decree calling for attacks on others considered infidels by Islamic State ideologues.

 

But if there were more substantial connections, they would reinforce worries by Western security officials and others that the group remains a potent threat, despite the destruction of its self-proclaimed Middle East caliphate earlier this year. In a sign of the concern, the F.B.I., Interpol and other foreign intelligence services joined the investigation.

[Grief and anger as the victims are buried.]

It remains unclear how Mr. Zaharan, leader of a local group known for little more than defacing Buddhist statues, could have organized and executed such a devastating, sophisticated attack. But Indian officials said Tuesday that they had been watching him since last year as a suspected online recruiter for the Islamic State.

 
President Maithripala Sirisena acknowledged there had been security lapses leading up to the bombings, He is shown here in December.CreditAdam Dean for The New York Times
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President Maithripala Sirisena acknowledged there had been security lapses leading up to the bombings, He is shown here in December.CreditAdam Dean for The New York Times

Some Sri Lankan officials speculated that the attacks had been retaliation for the mosque massacres in New Zealand last month. But there was no corroborating evidence to support this.

For Sri Lanka, the island nation still recovering from a wrenching civil war that ended a decade ago, the trauma, anger and recriminations from the suicide bombings only worsened as it became clear that some top officials had known of the threat.

 

A spate of anti-Muslim violence was reported as the death toll from the attacks rose to at least 321. The authorities said more than 40 suspects had been seized, all Sri Lankans. And the prime minister said that Mr. Zaharan, whose whereabouts were unknown on Monday, may have been one of the suicide bombers.

In his first national address since the attacks, President Maithripala Sirisena sought to allay criticism that he was at least partly responsible for the security failure. He announced major changes were coming.

“I must be truthful and admit that there were lapses on the part of defense officials,” the president said.

He acknowledged “there was an intelligence report about the attack,” which his subordinates had known about for many days, but he also claimed that he was “not kept informed.”

 
Police stand guard outside a Colombo safe house on Tuesday where suspects of the Easter Sunday bombings were arrested.CreditAdam Dean for The New York Times
merlin_153859416_ec922231-8613-402d-87ec
 
 
 
Police stand guard outside a Colombo safe house on Tuesday where suspects of the Easter Sunday bombings were arrested.CreditAdam Dean for The New York Times

Mr. Sirisena did not specify who would be replaced. But his senior adviser, Shiral Lakthilaka, said that “positions of secretary of the Ministry of Defense and inspector general of police are positions earmarked for dismissal.”

[What we know, and don’t know, about the attacks.]

Many Sri Lankans say the president contributed to the failure by having refused to let the prime minister, Ranil Wickremesinghe, a political rival, into security meetings.

 

The Sri Lankan government has been bitterly divided and dysfunctional for months. Mr. Wickremesinghe has complained that he wasn’t given any information about the impending attacks.

He said at a news conference that there “seems to have been foreign involvement” and that investigators believed some of the assailants “have traveled abroad and have come back.” He stopped short of saying they had fought for the Islamic State.

Mr. Wickremesinghe also said that “Zaharan is suspected to be one of the bombers,” but that forensic identification had not been verified.

Mr. Zaharan, who went by several names, including Mohammed Cassim Mohamed Zaharan, Zaharan Hashmi and Zahran Hashim, was considered little more than an unsuccessful cleric who preached kill-all-the-infidels messages as he drifted from mosque to mosque in Sri Lanka and India.

Before the Easter Sunday assault, one of the deadliest terrorist attacks in recent years, the most destructive act by Mr. Zaharan’s small band of followers was chipping the faces of three Buddha statues.

“He never came across to me as intelligent and he never had many people around him,” said Hilmy Ahmed, the vice president of the Muslim Council of Sri Lanka, who had been tracking him for years.

 

[Newlyweds and families, students and tourists: The victims of the bombings.]

Aside from the video’s claim of responsibility, the Islamic State provided no evidence it had played any role. But Indian officials disclosed Tuesday that they had begun investigating Mr. Zaharan in 2018 after discovering an Islamic State cell in southern India.

According to Indian officials, Mr. Zaharan, believed to be in his late 30s or early 40s, was a strident YouTube recruiter for the group. In one video he appears in front of an image of the burning World Trade Center towers from the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, urging Muslims to kill nonbelievers.

As the first mass burials unfolded in Sri Lanka on Tuesday, with bulldozers making space for the hundreds of new graves, grief hardened into anger.

Many Sri Lankans are furious at their government for not stopping the attacks. The leader of the Catholic community, Cardinal Malcolm Ranjith, the archbishop of Colombo, the capital, said he would have told worshipers not to go to Easter Mass, had he known of the impending danger.

 
 
Coffins are carried for burial after a group funeral Mass for victims.CreditAdam Dean for The New York Times
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Coffins are carried for burial after a group funeral Mass for victims.CreditAdam Dean for The New York Times

“Couldn’t we have prevented the situation?” Cardinal Ranjith asked. “Why wasn’t there any action?”

Religious tensions appeared to be spreading. Grieving Christians spoke of revenge, and several mosques were pelted with stones. In different parts of the island, Muslim-owned shops were vandalized, and hundreds of Muslim families, fearing for their safety, began to flee religiously mixed areas.

Many counterterrorism experts said they still found it hard to believe that Mr. Zaharan’s group carried out a half-dozen coordinated bombings with such deadly precision.

 

Most experts say an international terrorist group helped. It was likely that the explosives used in the attacks had been secreted into Sri Lanka through smuggler boats widely known to bring heroin, illegal weapons and other contraband to the island, said security officials who work in Sri Lanka.

Colombo remained under a nighttime curfew and on edge. Police officials told citizens to be wary of any suspicious-looking trucks that might be carrying bombs.

While Mr. Zaharan may have struggled in the real world, he appeared to have found his voice online. According to Mr. Ahmed, the vice president of Sri Lanka’s Muslim Council, Mr. Zaharan’s preaching was too radical for the mosques of Kattankudy, his hometown in eastern Sri Lanka.

“The people of his village turned against him and told him to leave,” Mr. Ahmed said. “So he turned to YouTube.”

 
Melton Roy, praying Tuesday amid newly buried graves of Easter Sunday bombing victims at Sellakanda Catholic Cemetery in Negombo, Sri Lanka.CreditAdam Dean for The New York Times
merlin_153867198_4d875d1b-2411-4183-b5fe
 
 
Melton Roy, praying Tuesday amid newly buried graves of Easter Sunday bombing victims at Sellakanda Catholic Cemetery in Negombo, Sri Lanka.CreditAdam Dean for The New York Times

Not much is known about his upbringing. He did his early years of schooling in Kattankudy and traveled to India for a seven-year-course on Islamic theology, Mr. Ahmed said, but dropped out after three years.

He then began a long sojourn of traveling between India and Sri Lanka, preaching at any mosque that would accept him, teaching the Quran to younger students and uploading more than a dozen fiery videos, including many that argued Muslims had a right to kill non-Muslims.

 

After deadly religious riots broke out between Buddhists and Muslims in Sri Lanka in 2014, Mr. Ahmed said he began paying closer attention to Mr. Zaharan. Mr. Ahmed’s moderate Muslim group was trying to calm tensions between the warring communities, and in a meeting with government intelligence agents in early 2015, Mr. Ahmed said, he suggested that intelligence agents monitor Mr. Zaharan.

Mr. Zaharan disappeared for a few years, Mr. Ahmed said, but last December he re-emerged in the town of Mawanella, in central Sri Lanka. Some young men, who the police said were Muslim, defaced three Buddhist statues, and after arresting them, police officers determined the young men had been attending religious classes run by Mr. Zaharan.

That investigation led officers to a remote coconut plantation on the northwestern coast where Sri Lankan officials discovered a large weapons cache, including 100 kilograms of explosives and detonators.

Around the same time, Indian intelligence agents began following Mr. Zaharan. They said on Tuesday that they had cracked an Islamic State cell in southern India. A member of that cell said he had been influenced by Mr. Zaharan’s videos in which the preacher encouraged believers to join the Islamic State. The Indian investigations picked up pace.

Mr. Zaharan’s small group, which he called the National Thowheeth Jama’ath, was clearly getting more ambitious, and the Indians were increasingly concerned. By early April, they provided the Sri Lankans with the names, addresses and phone numbers of Mr. Zaharan’s followers. The Indians said they had information Mr. Zaharan was plotting to blow up churches and attack the Indian Embassy in Sri Lanka. The Sri Lankans did not make any arrests or increase security at the churches.

On Easter morning, just hours before the bombings, the Indians again communicated with the Sri Lankans that an attack was imminent, according to one Indian official. Again, the Sri Lankans did not do anything.

On Tuesday, the video released by the Islamic State appeared to show Mr. Zaharan and seven unidentified figures pledging allegiance to the Islamic State’s leader, Abu Bakr al Baghdadi.

Mr. Zaharan, the only one whose face is visible, is also the only one holding an assault rifle.

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umbertino Grand Master

umbertino

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Posted (edited)
5 hours ago, coorslite21 said:

I doubt they put this attack together in a month.

...    CL

 

 

Right....It was explained infact that while many/most of those terrorists were local Sri Lankan folks  ( some of them coming from a very wealthy family) the whole thing got organized and orchestrated from outside....Indian Intelligence did warn Sri Lanka Police twice about it....No measures were taken...Daesh already claimed it was their action.....Stated it was a payback for the Christchurch, NZ attacks

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umbertino Grand Master

umbertino

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The latest on Sri Lanka's bombing investigation

 

By Caitlin Hu, Euan McKirdy and Tara John, CNN

Updated 1 hr 21 min ago12:12 p.m. ET, April 25, 2019

 

 

 

https://edition.cnn.com/asia/live-news/sri-lanka-bombings-latest-day-4-intl-dle/index.html

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Sri Lanka suicide bomber was previously arrested and then released

 

By James Griffiths, Sandi Sidhu, Rebecca Wright and Ivan Watson, CNN

Updated 1350 GMT (2150 HKT) April 25, 2019

 

 

https://edition.cnn.com/2019/04/25/asia/sri-lanka-investigation-arrests-intl/index.html

Freakin' unbelievable

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Adam Montana Proficient

Adam Montana

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Sri Lanka suicide bomber was previously arrested and then released, government says - CNN

 

Sri Lanka suicide bomber was previously arrested and then released, government says - CNN

 

I saw that one this morning as well. :(

 

 

Sri Lanka suicide bomber was previously arrested and then released

By James Griffiths, Sandi Sidhu, Rebecca Wright and Ivan Watson, CNN

 

Updated 9:50 AM ET, Thu April 25, 2019

 
 
 
 

Colombo, Sri Lanka (CNN)One of the Sri Lanka suicide bombers was previously arrested by police and then released, a senior government official told CNN Thursday.

Ilham Ahmed Ibrahim -- one of two sons of a spice tycoon who blew themselves up in Sunday's attacks -- detonated a device at the Cinnamon Grand hotel in Colombo, the official told CNN.
"It was the suicide bomber of the Cinnamon Grand bomb attack who was released earlier," the official said.
Ilham Ahmed Ibrahim and his brother Imsath Ahmed Ibrahim were previously identified as two of the suicide bombers in Sunday's attacks, which left at least 359 people dead across the country.
 
 
Police have confirmed to CNN that they are holding the brothers' father, Mohamed Yusuf Ibrahim, a wealthy spice trader, on suspicion of aiding and abetting his sons.
Police spokesman Ruwan Gunasekera said the elder Ibrahim was in custody, as were all other members of the Ibrahim family known to police.
CNN has not been able to reach Mohamed Yusuf Ibrahim or other members of his family for comment.
In an interview with CNN, Sri Lanka's Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe said the suspected bombers were upper and middle class, well-educated and educated abroad, a profile he described as "surprising." He added that several of them were under surveillance ahead of the attacks, but that there had not been "sufficient" evidence to take them into custody.
Spice trader Mohamed Ibrahim, center, looks on as his son Imsath, right, shakes the hand of a government minister, in a 2016 photo.
 
Spice trader Mohamed Ibrahim, center, looks on as his son Imsath, right, shakes the hand of a government minister, in a 2016 photo.
Meanwhile, a huge international criminal investigation is ramping up in Sri Lanka, with six foreign police agencies and Interpol assisting local police, including Scotland Yard from the UK and the FBI from the US.
Gunasekera told CNN that officers from Sri Lanka's Criminal Investigation Department (CID) and Terrorism Investigation Department (TID) have raided five safe houses across the country in connection with Sunday's attacks. Those locations have since been sealed for forensic investigation.
More than 70 suspects have been taken into custody on a range of charges, including suspicion of terrorism, aiding and abetting terrorism and conspiracy to commit terrorism, Gunasekera said. Four high level suspects are being held by TID, and 33 are being held by CID, he added.
Of those arrested, four suspects are female, and all are Muslims. Gunasekera said most of them are family members and friends of the suspected suicide bombers. None of those arrested are foreigners.
Significant raids were carried out on Wednesday night, he added, in which 16 people were arrested at various locations, most near the capital Colombo. Three shotguns and two walkie-talkies were also seized.
A security officer stands guard outside St. Anthony's Shrine where bombing was carried out on Easter Sunday, in Colombo.
 
A security officer stands guard outside St. Anthony's Shrine where bombing was carried out on Easter Sunday, in Colombo.
As police continue to investigate how a previously little known terror group managed to pull off a huge and coordinated series of attacks, Gunasekera also revealed that police had confirmed that an explosion in the predominantly Muslim area of Kathankudi, in eastern Sri Lanka, in early April was a test run by the terrorists. In that explosion they blew up a motorcycle.
On Thursday, police said search operations were currently underway across Colombo, including the setting up of roadblocks. Police have asked the public not to panic, a police spokesman told CNN.
Sri Lanka remains on high alert and numerous controlled demolitions have been carried out of suspicious packages and vehicles in recent days. However, Gunasekera said that he did not believe the controlled demolitions on Thursday were of actual explosives.
Prime Minister Wickremesinghe warned of the potential for more attacks in the country. In his CNN intevriew, he said authorities were targeting "sleepers" -- terrorists who could activate to initiate another round of attacks.
"Police and security forces are rounding up those involved, but they're also rounding up the sleepers, those used on second and third rounds (of attacks)," he said.
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umbertino Grand Master

umbertino

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Posted (edited)
7 minutes ago, pokerplayer said:

Great news that the number of dead is much lower but still very sad that it even happened in the first place. Even one is way to many.

 

   pp

 

Of course, PP...It's been an  horrible tragedy....

 

I forgot to mention ( granted it's not another mistake) that on that number of victims , there are 45 children ......

 

 

NOBODY should ever die in a terror act ( meaning there should be NO terror acts)....

 

More intelligence agents etc

 

 

But the plan was found and revealed by India, UK and other Countries Intelligence Services but Sri Lanka Security failed big time either in giving credit to that and / or acting with counter-measures.....

Edited by umbertino
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umbertino Grand Master

umbertino

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Why Sri Lanka attackers' wealthy backgrounds shouldn't surprise us

 

Recent history shows that people with comfortable lives can easily be drawn towards violent extremism

 

 

Jason Burke

Thu 25 Apr 2019 16.50 BST Last modified on Fri 26 Apr 2019 11.37 BST

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umbertino Grand Master

umbertino

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Sri Lanka bombings: at least 15 killed as police raid suspected hideout

 

Children and suicide bombers among the dead, say authorities, following fierce gun battle in east coast town

 

 

Michael Safi in Colombo, and agencies

Sat 27 Apr 2019 11.48 BST

 

 

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/apr/27/sri-lanka-20-killed-as-police-raid-suspected-bomber-hideout

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