Sri Lankan police arrest over 100 suspects after anti-Muslim riots leave one man dead
A Sri Lankan soldier looks on as he stands guard by a damaged shop after a mob attack in Minuwangoda on May 14, 2019. Sri Lanka's police arrested more than 100 suspects and reimposed night curfews in violence-prone areas on Wednesday after anti-Muslim riots left one man dead and caused extensive damage to homes, businesses and mosques.
Police spokesman Gunasekera said the night curfew will go into effect from 15:30 GMT while the most affected North Western Province will have a longer shutdown.A Sri Lankan province north of the capital was under indefinite curfew on Tuesday after the first death in anti-Muslim riots in the wake of the Easter terror attacks, police said.
Sri Lanka has imposed a curfew across its North Western Province on Monday, a police spokesman said, after attacks on mosques and shops owned by Muslims in the worst outbreak of violence since the Easter bombings on churches and hotels by militants.Some social media sites blocked after violent incidents
In an interview with Reuters on Friday, Senanayake said that investigators have established that the plotters had links to Daesh, but added that the authorities are still trying to establish how deep those contacts were."Definitely there is an IS [Daesh] link. That doesn't mean it was a direct IS [Daesh] hit. But we are trying to establish how deep it is in order to plan our [military] operations.
Sri Lanka's president says "99 percent" of the suspects in the Easter Sunday attacks on churches and hotels have been arrested and their explosive materials seized.on Tuesday that Sri Lanka is now safe for tourists. Sri Lankan security authorities have either killed or arrested all the militants responsible for the Easter suicide bombings that left 257 people dead, police chief Chandana Wickramaratne said on Tuesday.
Soldiers conducted a security sweep of schools on Sunday after state institutions were asked to re-open on a staggered basis."I have decided not to send my son to school until the country returns to normal," said Sujeeva Dissanayake, whose son goes to the state-run Asoka College in Colombo.Mid-to-upper stream classes resumed on Monday, to be followed by lower grades at a later date.
"They wanted to show this place was normal. If someone comes to see, it looks like a farm. But what they were doing is terrorism," said a senior police officer in the Batticaloa area, asking to remain anonymous because he was not authorised to speak to media. A letter from Pope Francis addressed to him was read out at the end of the service in which the pontiff says he prayed that "hearts hardened by hatred may yield to His will for peace and reconciliation among all his children."A city near Sri Lanka's capital was placed under curfew by police on Sunday, following clashes between Muslim and Christian mobs two weeks after suicide bombings left 257 people dead.
Ranjith, who is the archbishop of Colombo and an outspoken critic of the Sri Lankan government's apparent failure to act on Indian government intelligence ahead of the Easter attacks, said in the letter that he was closing churches and Catholic schools throughout Sri Lanka and cancelling public congregations for Mass "until further notice.
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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