By: LekshmiSajeev
The scale and sophistication of the Easter Sunday attacks on churches and hotels in Sri Lanka suggested the involvement of an external group such as Islamic State, the US ambassador said on Wednesday (24) as the death toll jumped to 359.
Sri Lankan officials have blamed two domestic Islamist groups with suspected ties to Islamic State. Details have begun to emerge of a band of nine, well-educated suicide bombers, including a woman, from well-to-do families.
“If you look at the scale of the attacks, the level of coordination, the sophistication of them, it’s not implausible to think there are foreign linkages,” the US ambassador to Sri Lanka, Alaina Teplitz, told reporters in Colombo.
“Exploring potential linkages are going to be part of (investigations),” she said.
Teplitz said the US Federal Bureau of Investigation and the US military were supporting the investigation.
“Our hope is that as a result of our joint efforts we’re going to roll up the perpetrators and collaborators, trace the linkages and be able to prevent this sort of thing from happening in the future.”
Teplitz’s comments came as Sri Lanka’s junior defence minister, Ruwan Wijewardene, conceded that there had been a significant intelligence failure before the attacks, with reports of warnings of strikes not acted on and feuds at the highest levels of government.
“It is a major lapse in the sharing of intelligence information,” Wijewardene told a separate news conference.
“We have to take responsibility.”
Lakshman Kiriella, the leader of parliament, said senior officials had deliberately withheld intelligence about possible attacks.
“Some top intelligence officials hid the intelligence information purposefully. Information was there, but the top brass security officials did not take appropriate actions,” Kiriella, who is also minister of public enterprise, told parliament.
He said information about possible suicide attacks was received from Indian intelligence on April 4 and a Security Council meeting was chaired by president Maithripala Sirisena three days later but it was not shared more widely.
Police earlier said the death toll had risen overnight to 359 from 321, making it the deadliest such attack in South Asian history. About 500 people were wounded.
If the Islamic State connection is confirmed, it would be the deadliest ever attack linked to the group.
The early Sunday bombings shattered the relative calm that has existed in Buddhist-majority Sri Lanka since a civil war against mostly Hindu, ethnic Tamil separatists ended 10 years ago, and raised fears of a return to sectarian violence.
