Sri Lanka’s prime minister is warning there are more explosives and militants “out there” after the Easter suicide bombings that killed over 320 people.
Ranil Wickremesinghe made the comment at a news conference. The country remains on high alert, with several bomb scares over the past days.
Wickremesinghe said some officials will likely lose their jobs over intelligence lapses surrounding the attack. He acknowledged there was a prior warning, and said India’s embassy was eyed as a possible target.
The toll from the coordinated bombings at churches, luxury hotels and other sites now stands at 321 dead and 500 wounded. He said a planned attack at a fourth hotel failed and that the leader of a local militant group blamed for the assault may have led the attacks and been killed.
Sri Lanka’s minister of defence said the bombings were “carried out in retaliation” for attacks on mosques in Christchurch on March 15. The prime minister’s office here in New Zealand said it hasn’t “seen any intelligence upon which such an assessment might be based.”
Meanwhile, the Islamic State group is claiming responsibility for the attacks, via its news agency. It later released a photo of the man the Sri Lanka government has identified as the leader of the Easter attacks, Mohammed Zahran, also known as Zahran Hashmi.
But the group, which has lost all the territory it once held in Iraq and Syria, has made a series of unsupported claims of responsibility.
As a state of emergency took…
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