Two weeks after the Easter Sunday bombings, Sri Lanka's president says, 'the country is in a safe position right now'
Earlier, PM Ranil Wickremesinghe told parliament the nation was a victim of"global terrorism" and needed international support to deal with the persisting threat. Just over two weeks ago, 257 people were killed in Daesh-claimed attacks.
PM Ranil Wickremesinghe told parliament that his Buddhist-majority nation was a victim of extremists and needed international support to deal with the persisting threat."Even if we have arrested or killed every terrorist responsible for the Easter Sunday attacks, extremists abroad can still cause trouble for us," the PM said. Easter bombers killed or arrested – police chief
"The two bomb experts of the group have been killed. We have seized the explosives they had stored for future attacks."State schools in Sri Lanka resumed classes on Monday amid tight security after the Easter Sunday bombings, but many anxious parents kept their children at home over fears of more attacks.
The narrow, sandy plot is dotted with a cinderblock four-storey watchtower, as well as mango trees, a chicken coop and a goat shed. Cardinal Malcolm Ranjith, the archbishop of Colombo, offered a televised Mass from his residence that was attended mostly by priests and nuns. The officer said an investigation was underway into the clashes, the first violence between Muslims and Christians since the Easter Sunday attacks targeting three churches and three luxury hotels in the country.Sri Lanka's Catholic cardinal received "foreign information" that attempts would be made this week to attack a church and another church institution, according to a letter he sent Thursday to church officials that later appeared on social media.
A spokesman for the cardinal said on Thursday the Church received "specific information of two possible attacks against churches," and it was decided to call off the May 5 mass. Security in Buddhist-majority Sri Lanka remains tight after the April 21 suicide bomb attacks on hotels and churches.Sri Lankan security officials warned that the group behind Easter Sunday's suicide bombings are planning imminent attacks and could be dressed in military uniforms.
Tourist arrivals in Colombo will fall by 50 percent following the Easter Sunday bombings that killed more than 250 people, Sri Lanka's Tourism Bureau Chairman Kishu Gomes said on Monday. Sirisena said he was using emergency powers to ban any form of face covering in public. The restriction will take effect from Monday, his office said in a statement.
The raid took place at the NTJ's base in the eastern town of Kattankudy a day after the group was banned under new emergency laws. The bomber destroyed part of the shrine's roof and scarred its walls with shrapnel, damaging the clock tower whose hands were still stuck at 8:45, a grim reminder of the dest ruction wreaked.But on Sunday morning, as Sri Lanka's Christians sought to come to terms with the tragedy, scores of Catholics held a heavily guarded vigil outside the Colombo church.
Navy forces have been deployed to clean up the church, remove bloodstains from its ceiling and wash away the overpowering stench of death that still lingered a week after the bombing. The men set off explosives after an hour-long gun battle with police Saturday, inside what was believed to be a terrorist hideout near the eastern town of Kalmunai, in the latest fallout from the Easter attacks.Fifteen people died in the clashes, police said, including three women and six children.
Indian police were investigating suspected sympathisers of Daesh in southern India when a name they had no record of surfaced — National Thowheeth Jama'ath , the militant group that authorities say conducted the coordinated Easter Sunday attacks on churches and hotels in Sri Lanka that killed more than 250 people.
Presidential spokesman Dharmasri Ekanayake says the move allows the government to confiscate any property belonging to the two organisations.The bodies of 15 people, including six children, were discovered at the site of a fierce overnight gun battle on the east coast of Sri Lanka, a military spokesman said on Saturday, six days after a rash of suicide bomber attacks that killed more than 250 people.
Brigadier Sumith Atapattu said the gunbattle happened in the coastal town of Sammanthurai, 325 km from the capital, Colombo. Australia's threat level remained unchanged, advising travellers to "reconsider your need to travel" to Sri Lanka, one tier below the highest warning of "do not travel." "Well there has been money coming in from Saudi Arabia over the last 20, 30 years to religious organisations ... I don't know who are the agencies who sent it. I mean Saudi Arabia or the Middle East has been the source of many of those funds and some of it has gone into these extreme organisations," the prime minister toldSome mosques in Sri Lanka held Friday prayers despite the potential for attacks after the Easter suicide bombings.
Sri Lankan authorities had asked Muslims to pray at home rather than attend communal Friday prayers that are the most important of the week.Wanted radical leader died in hotel bombing – president
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