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A total of seven suicide bombers carried out a series of eight devastating blasts that tore through churches and luxury hotels in Sri Lanka on Easter Sunday, killing 290 people in the country’s worst terror attack, the Government Analyst’s Department said on Monday.
The blasts targeted St Anthony’s Church in Colombo, St Sebastian’s Church in the western coastal town of Negombo and Zion Church in the eastern town of Batticaloa around 8.45 am (local time) as the Easter Sunday mass were in progress.
Explosions were also reported from three five-star hotels — the Shangri-La, the Cinnamon Grand and the Kingsbury in Colombo.
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“The attacks which had taken place at the Shangri-La, Kingsbury, and Cinnamon Grand hotels and also at St Anthony’s Church in Kotahena, St. Sebastian’s Church in Katuwapitiya, and the Zeon Church in Batticaloa have been identified as suicide bombings,” the Sunday Times reported, quoting the Government Analysts Department.
“A total of seven suicide bombers had carried out these explosions,” the department said.
The death toll rose to 290 on Monday, including six Indians, from the blasts.
This was the biggest ever terror attack in the country since the end of the Sri Lankan civil war involving the LTTE and the Sri Lankan military.
Among the dead were at least 30 foreigners – all in Colombo. Reports suggest that the foreign nationals killed in attack include British, Dutch, Americans and Japanese among others.
Police have arrested 24 suspects till now in connection with attacks. However, no group has claimed responsibility for Sunday’s serial blasts.
Most of the deadly attacks in the past in the country had been carried out by the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) which ran a military campaign for a separate Tamil homeland for nearly three decades before its collapse in 2009 after the Sri Lankan Army killed its supreme leader Velupillai Prabhakaran.
(With inputs from PTI)
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