Explosions at eight sites across Sri Lanka have left 290 dead and more than 500 injured
On Sunday 21 April a series of coordinated bombings took place in Sri Lanka . The explosions targeted Christians at Easter Sunday church services in Colombo, Negombo and Batticaloa, and tourists staying in luxury hotels in the capital. With the death toll at 290 and more than 500 injured , no group has yet claimed responsibility for the attacks but Sri Lankan officials have said religious extremists are to blame.
Six of the eight bombings took place in Sri Lanka’s capital. At 8.45am the city was rocked by simultaneous explosions at a large Catholic church, St Anthony’s Shrine, and the Shangri-La and Kingsbury hotels. Five minutes later another hotel, the Cinnamon Grand, was also hit.
Police have not said which site was worst hit. However, it is thought that at least 160 people were injured in the congregation of St Anthony’s Shrine. The Shangri-La hotel has 541 rooms and suites, as well as six restaurants and bars. The Kingsbury has 229 rooms and suites, and the Cinnamon Grand has 501 rooms. Officers began to carry out raids across the city. At 1.45pm there was another explosion in the suburb of Dehiwala, at a guesthouse close to the national zoo. At 2.15pm a further blast occurred in a housing scheme in Dematagoda. These last two bombs appear to have been carried out by the attackers as they fled from police.
At 8.45am , as the first explosions went off in Colombo, a bomb ripped through St Sebastian’s church in Negombo, a seaside town to the north of the capital. An Easter Sunday service was taking place and it is thought that at least 50 members of the congregation were killed, though no official breakdown of the death toll has been released.
On the east coast of the island at 9.05am , the Zion evangelical church in Batticaloa was also attacked during its Easter service. The main hospital in the city received more than 300 people with injuries in the hours following the blast.
A decade since the end of its civil war, Sri Lanka had been enjoying a period of relative peace and a boom in tourism. It was even ranked as the top country for travel in 2019 . However, the Easter Sunday bombings have been described by Sri Lankan officials as “a brand new type of terrorism”, while the death toll puts the attacks on a par with the deadliest atrocities since 9/11 .
During its civil war (1983-2009), many terror attacks in Sri Lanka were attributed to the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE, or the Tamil Tigers). According to the Global Terrorism Database , among the deadliest were an attack on Buddhist worshippers in May 1985 (146 killed), an ambush of three buses in April 1987 (126 killed) and an attack on two mosques in August 1990 (112 killed). In 2006 the number of deaths from terrorism in Sri Lanka peaked, as 371 people were killed during the course of six terrorist incidents.
Sri Lanka has a population of 20.3 million, according to the 2012 census . The majority ethnic group is Sinhalese, who make up almost three-quarters of the population (74.9%). Sri Lankan Tamils make up the largest minority group, with 11.1%.
Christianity is a minority religion in Sri Lanka, followed by just 7.6% of the population. The majority of the population are Buddhist (70.1%), with other minority religions being Hinduism (12.6%) and Islam (9.7%). Christians, who were targeted in the attacks, tend to live mainly in the northern, north-western and western provinces of the country.
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