President says police seeking 140 with links to Islamic State
This handout photo taken and released by the Sri Lankan President's Office on April 23, 2019 shows President Maithripala Sirisena visiting St. Sebastian's church in Negombo, two days after a series of bomb attacks targeting churches and luxury hotels in Sri Lanka.
Nearly 10,000 soldiers were being deployed across the Indian Ocean island state to carry out searches and provide security for religious centers, the military said on Friday. Cardinal Malcolm Ranjith also appealed to priests not to conduct mass at churches until further notice.Police have detained at least 76 people, including foreigners from Syria and Egypt, in their investigations so far.Islamic State provided no evidence to back its claim that it was behind the attacks. If true, it would be one of the worst attacks carried out by the group outside Iraq and Syria.
Sirisena told reporters on Friday some Sri Lankan youths had been involved with Islamic State since 2013. He said information uncovered so far suggested there were 140 people in Sri Lanka involved in Islamic State activities.Authorities have so far focused their investigations on international links to two domestic Islamist groups - National Thawheed Jama’ut and Jammiyathul Millathu Ibrahim - they believe carried out the attacks.
Opposing factions aligned to Wickremesinghe and Sirisena have often refused to communicate with each other and blame any setbacks on their opponents, government sources say.The Easter Sunday bombings shattered the relative calm that had existed in Buddhist-majority Sri Lanka since a civil war against mostly Hindu ethnic Tamil separatists ended 10 years ago.
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