Sri Lanka bombings death toll nears 360 as police make more arrests

The death toll from the Easter suicide bombings in Sri Lanka has risen to 359 and more suspects have been arrested, police in Colombo have said.

Islamic State has claimed responsibility and released images that purported to show the seven bombers who blew themselves up at three churches and three hotels on Sunday.

It was the worst violence the South Asian island nation had seen since its civil war ended a decade ago.

The government has said the attacks were carried out by Islamic fundamentalists in apparent retaliation for the New Zealand mosque massacre last month, but has said the seven bombers were all Sri Lankan.

New Zealand’s prime minister, Jacinda Ardern, said she had not received any official advice from Sri Lanka or seen any intelligence to corroborate the claims.

Sri Lankan prime minister Ranil Wickremesinghe said investigators were still working to determine the extent of the bombers’ foreign links.

Police spokesman Ruwan Gunasekara said on Wednesday that 18 suspects were arrested overnight, raising the total detained to 58.

The prime minister had warned on Tuesday that several suspects armed with explosives were still at large.

IS has lost all the territory it once held in Iraq and Syria and has made a series of unsupported claims of responsibility around the world.

Sri Lankan authorities have blamed a local extremist group, National Towheed Jamaar (NTJ), whose leader, alternately known as Mohammed Zahran or Zahran Hashmi, became known to Muslim leaders three years ago for his incendiary speeches online.

IS’s Aamaq news agency released an image purported to show the leader of the attackers, standing amid seven others whose faces are covered.

The group did not provide any other evidence for its claim, and the identities of those depicted in the image were not independently verified.

Meanwhile, in an address to parliament, Ruwan Wijewardene, the state minister of defence, said “weakness” within Sri Lanka’s security apparatus led to the failure to prevent the nine bombings.

“By now it has been established that the intelligence units were aware of this attack and a group of responsible people were informed about the impending attack,” Mr Wijewardene said.

“However, this information has been circulated among only a few officials.”

In a live address to the nation Sri Lanka’s president, Maithripala Sirisena, said he also was kept in the dark on the intelligence about the planned attacks.

He vowed to “take stern action” against the officials who failed to share the information and also pledged “a complete restructuring” of the security forces.

Mr Wijewardene said the government had evidence that the bombings were carried out “by an Islamic fundamentalist group” in retaliation for the March 15 mosque shootings in Christchurch, New Zealand, that killed 50 people, although he did not disclose what the evidence was.

She added that the US believes “the terrorist plotting is ongoing” and Washington continued to warn its citizens in Sri Lanka to be careful.

Before the bombings, Sri Lankan officials received intelligence reports and warnings that such an attack could be looming, but the information failed to stop the assault.

“The Sri Lankans themselves have said they received information, and they had their own lapses that resulted in a failure to either mitigate or warn. So that’s incredibly tragic.”