Updated
Colombo, Apr 21 (Agencies): Seven people were arrested and three police officers were killed during a raid on a house in Colombo on Sunday as the death toll from a rash of bombings at churches and hotels in Sri Lanka rose past 200, police and local media said.
“Altogether we have information of 207 dead from all hospitals. According to the information as of now we have 450 injured people admitted to hospitals,” Police Spokesman Ruwan Gunasekera told reporters in Colombo.
Further details of the raid on the house in the Sri Lankan capital were not immediately available.
The eight explosions, some of which officials said were suicide bomb attacks, led to an immediate clampdown, with the government declaring a curfew and blocking access to major social media and messaging sites, including Facebook and WhatsApp.
Following the deadly attack that claimed several lives, Sri Lankan government ordered curfew from 6 pm Sunday to 6 am Monday.
Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe condemned the attacks -- the worst act of violence since the end of Sri Lanka's civil war a decade ago -- as "cowardly", and said the government was working to "contain the situation".
The powerful blasts -– six in quick succession and then two more hours later -- wrought devastation, including at the capital's well-known St Anthony's Shrine, a historic Catholic Church.
Hospital sources said British, Dutch and American citizens were among the dead overall, with Britons and Japanese also injured. A Portuguese man also died, the country's LUSA news agency reported.
An AFP photographer at the scene at St Anthony's saw bodies lying on the floor, some draped with scarves and clothes.
Much of the church roof was blown out in the explosion, with roof tiles, glass and splintered wood littering the floor along with pools of blood.
The injured flooded into local hospitals, where officials reported hundreds of wounded were being admitted.
Police chief warning
The nature of the blasts was not immediately clear and there were no immediate claims of responsibility.
But documents seen by AFP show that Sri Lanka's police chief Pujuth Jayasundara issued an intelligence alert to top officers 10 days ago, warning that suicide bombers planned to hit "prominent churches".
"A foreign intelligence agency has reported that the NTJ (National Thowheeth Jama'ath) is planning to carry out suicide attacks targeting prominent churches as well as the Indian high commission in Colombo," the alert said.
The NTJ is a radical Muslim group in Sri Lanka that was linked last year to the vandalisation of Buddhist statues.
The defence ministry ordered a night-time curfew, beginning on Sunday 6:00pm local time (1230 GMT), and a "temporary" social media ban was imposed by the government.
The first blast was reported at St Anthony's, followed by a second deadly explosion at St Sebastian's, a church in the town of Negombo, north of the capital.
"A bomb attack to our church, please come and help if your family members are there," read a post in English on the church's Facebook page.
Soon after, police confirmed that a third church in the east-coast town of Batticaloa had been hit, along with three high-end hotels in the capital.
Later in the afternoon, a hotel in the south of Colombo was struck -- killing at least two people and bringing the toll to 158 -- while another hit the suburb of Orugodawatta in the north of the capital.
'Cowardly attacks'
President Maithripala Sirisena said in an address that he was shocked by the explosions and appealed for calm, and the prime minister was expected to speak to the media shortly.
On Twitter, Wickremesinghe wrote: "I strongly condemn the cowardly attacks on our people today. I call upon all Sri Lankans during this tragic time to remain united and strong. Please avoid propagating unverified reports and speculation. The government is taking immediate steps to contain this situation."
The hotels targeted in the attack are all popular destinations for tourists, among them the Cinnamon Grand, which is near the prime minister's official residence in Colombo.
An official at the hotel told AFP the blast there had hit the restaurant, and reported at least one person had been killed.
At the Shangri-La hotel, an AFP photographer saw extensive damage on the second floor restaurant, with windows blown out and electrical wires hanging from the ceiling.
'Horrible scenes'
"Emergency meeting called in a few minutes. Rescue operations underway," Sri Lanka's Minister of Economic Reforms and Public Distribution, Harsha de Silva, said in a tweet on his verified account.
He said he had been to two of the attacked hotels and was at the scene at St Anthony's Shrine, where he described "horrible scenes".
"I saw many body parts strewn all over," he tweeted, adding that there were "many casualties including foreigners".
"Please stay calm and indoors," he added.
Embassies in Colombo warned their citizens to shelter in place, and Sri Lankan Airlines told customers to arrive at the airport four hours ahead of flights because of ramped-up security in the wake of the attacks.
Only around six percent of mainly Buddhist Sri Lanka is Catholic, but the religion is seen as a unifying force because it includes people from both the Tamil and majority Sinhalese ethnic groups.
There have been no attacks in Sri Lanka linked to foreign Islamist groups, despite local media reports that a 37-year-old Sri Lankan was killed in Syria in 2016 while fighting for the Islamic State group.
In January, Sri Lankan police seized a haul of explosives and detonators stashed near a wildlife sanctuary following the arrest of four men from a newly formed radical Muslim group.
Islamists blamed for Sri Lanka blasts: Daily
Colombo, Apr 21 (IANS): Islamist extremists carried out the first six major suicide bombings in Sri Lanka on Easter Sunday, The Daily Mirror reported.
Investigators said that two terrorists had on Saturday checked into Room 616 of The Shangri-La hotel, one of the three Colombo hotels where blasts took place in quick succession, the English language daily reported.
Close circuit television camera (CCTV) footage revealed that the suspects detonated the bombs in the cafeteria and on the corridor of the hotel, it said.
Investigators suspect that C-4 explosives weighing 25 kg were used for the bombings at the hotel, it said.
The investigators who broke into the room found materials used by "radical Islamic extremists", the daily quoted sources as saying.
It was unclear if the bombers were locals or international terrorists who arrived on tourist visa to the island nation.
Earlier Report
Colombo, Apr 21 (IANS): Sri Lanka declared a nationwide curfew after suicide bombers carried out a string of well-planned deadly explosions, mostly in Colombo, on Easter Sunday leaving 192 dead and 470 injured in the island's bloodiest day since the civil war ended a decade ago.
Starting around 8.30 a.m. when the first blast ripped apart the St Anthony's Shrine at Kochchikade here during Easter Mass, five more powerful explosions followed, hitting a total of three luxury hotels in Colombo and also St Sebastian's Church in Negombo, 30 km from here, and the Zion Church in the eastern district of Batticaloa, 250 km east of Colombo.
Just as authorities thought they had the situation under control, another blast went off in the afternoon near a restaurant close to the Dehiwala zoo in Colombo, killing two persons, and the Colombo neighbourhood of Dematogoda killing another three persons.
Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi spoke on phone with Sri Lankan President Maithripala Sirisena and Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe, called the terror attacks "cold-blooded and pre-planned" barbarism and offered all help from New Delhi.
No one claimed responsibility for the bloodbath but AFP reported that Sri Lankan Police chief Pujuth Jayasundara had issued a nationwide alert 10 days ago warning that suicide bombers planned to hit prominent Catholic churches.
The Daily Mirror newspaper quoted the findings of initial investigations as saying that the first six major blasts were caused by Islamist suicide bombers and added that two of them had checked a day earlier into the Shangri-La Hotel, one of the three hotels targeted in Colombo.
It said that the investigators who broke into Room No 616 "had recovered materials used by radical" Islamist extremists. The Mirror said it was not clear if the bombers were Sri Lankans or foreigners.
Authorities said that 35 foreigners were among the dead but their nationalities were not clear.
Besides Shangri-La, the other hotels hit were Cinnamon Grand, located near the official residence of the Prime Minister, and Kingsbury Hotel.
A Sri Lankan journalist, V. Thanabalasingham, told IANS over telephone that a sense of panic had gripped Colombo, which had given up its overbearing security apparatus ever since the Tamil Tigers were crushed in May 2009, leading to a decade of peace.
Photos and videos circulating on social media showed the roof of one church had been almost fully blown away in the blast. The floor was littered with a mixture of roof tiles, splintered wood and blood, media reports said.
Many people could be seen covered in blood. Some helped those with more serious injuries. Ambulances, their sirens wailing, rushed the dead and seriously injured to hospitals -- once a familiar sight in Colombo.
Minister of Economic Reforms Harsha de Silva described the carnage. "Horrible scenes. I saw many body parts strewn all over," he said.
President Sirisena urged the public to be calm and cooperate with the authorities to conduct swift investigations into the blasts. "I am shocked and saddened by the situation."
The government had imposed indefinite curfew across the nation and has temporarily blocked Facebook and Instagram to curb the spread of fake news.
AFP quoted the police warning as saying that a foreign intelligence agency had reported that the National Thowheeth Jama'ath (NTJ), a Muslim group blamed for attacks on Buddhist shrines, was planning to carry out suicide attacks against prominent churches as well as the Indian High Commission in Colombo.
Although Christians form only around 7 per cent of the Sri Lanka's mainly Buddhist population, they are found both in the majority Sinhalese and minority Tamil communities.
Eighth blast hits Sri Lanka: 156 dead, 500 injured - nationwide curfew declared
Colombo, Apr 21 (IANS): Sri Lanka declared a nationwide curfew after a string of eight explosions, mostly in Colombo, left at least 185 people dead and over 400 injured on Easter Sunday, authorities said.
Xinhua news agency reported that the death toll in the multiple blasts had risen to 185 even as two fresh explosions occurred in two Colombo neighbourhoods in the afternoon.
Earlier report
Colombo, Apr 21 (IANS): At least 156 people were killed and over 500 injured in six explosions on Sunday that targeted churches and five-star hotels in Sri Lanka, media reports said.
According to the island nation's The Daily Mirror newspaper, explosions were reported as hundreds of worshipers gathered at the St. Anthony's Church in Kochchikade, Kotahena, St. Sebastian's Church in Katuwapitiya in Katana, and a third one in Batticaloa to commemorate Easter Sunday.
Blasts where also reported at the Shangri-La, Cinnamon Grand and Kingsbury five-star hotels in Colombo.
The newspaper also said that there were several foreign tourists among the victims.
Images on social media showed the inside the St. Sebastian church with a shattered ceiling and blood on the pews, reports the BBC.
No-one has yet claimed responsibility for the attacks.