You turn to us for voices you won't hear anywhere else.

Sign up for Democracy Now!'s Daily Digest to get our latest headlines and stories delivered to your inbox every day.

Death Toll from Sri Lanka Easter Bombings Climbs to 359

HeadlineApr 24, 2019

In Sri Lanka, the death toll from Sunday’s bomb attacks targeting hotels and churches has climbed to 359, as authorities said they defused another bomb in downtown Colombo and arrested more suspects. Sri Lankan officials apologized Monday for failing to respond to multiple tip-offs ahead of Sunday’s eight attacks. A confidential memo circulated among Sri Lankan security agencies gave the names, addresses and phone numbers of some of the suspects. It’s not clear why authorities failed to act on the warnings. One surveillance video showed a suspect wearing a backpack casually strolling toward St. Sebastian Church north of Colombo minutes before a bomb ripped through a crowd of Easter Sunday worshipers, killing more than a hundred of them. On Tuesday, the self-proclaimed Islamic State claimed responsibility for the bombings. The group circulated a video purporting to show eight members of a Sri Lankan cell pledging allegiance to the group.

The original content of this program is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License. Please attribute legal copies of this work to democracynow.org. Some of the work(s) that this program incorporates, however, may be separately licensed. For further information or additional permissions, contact us.

Non-commercial news needs your support

We rely on contributions from our viewers and listeners to do our work.
Please do your part today.
Make a donation
Top