Sri Lanka attack leader ‘died in hotel bombing’, authorities say

The suspected ringleader of the terrorist group accused of carrying out the Easter Sunday bombings died in the blast at the Shangri La hotel, the Sri Lankan authorities claimed on Friday. 

Mohamed Zahran, the leader of the local jihadi group National Thawheed Jamath, known for his incendiary speeches on social media, was one of the suicide bombers who carried out the attacks on three hotels and three churches, the police said on an official Twitter account. 

The police also revealed that they had arrested the group’s second-in-command and that the assailants’ military training was provided by “Army Mohideen” and weapons training had taken place overseas and at some locations in Sri Lanka’s Eastern province. 

Maithripala Sirisena, the president, said the group was driven by “religious fanaticism,” suggesting its leader had killed himself to “set an example” and gain more followers. 

However, in a somewhat confusing statement, Chula Senaviratne, the national security chief, said there was “still ambiguity whether he is dead or not” while DNA tests are being carried out. 

“There is strong likelihood that the decapitated head of the suicide bomber at Shangri La was the same person we identified in the photographs…” he added. “However, we cannot be absolutely certain.”

The statements fit a pattern of claims and counterclaims by Sri Lankan officials that have muddied the waters in the chaotic aftermath of Sunday’s heinous attack as security forces rush to detain suspects and the government investigates a failure to act on key intelligence that could have prevented the tragedy.

Late on Thursday, Sri Lanka’s health ministry drastically revised down its estimated death toll from the coordinated bombings from 359 to 253. Some officials offered the tragic explanation that some bodies had been so torn apart by the blasts that they had been counted as more than one person. 

The Indian Ocean island remains on high alert as the authorities hunt down suspects linked to the NTJ which is believed to have been inspired by the global Islamic State terrorist network which claimed responsibility for the attacks earlier this week. 

Security agencies are also trying to track down hauls of explosives, some of which may have been left over from Sri Lanka’s decades-long civil war. 

President Sirisena told reporters in Colombo that some 140 people had been been identified as having links to the Islamic State group, although he reassured the public that the Sri Lankan government has “the capability to completely control ISIS activities.”

The government has, however, apologised for its failure to act on precise and repeated intelligence  from India weeks and even hours before the massacre, warning about named suspects who were planning to attack local churches. 

Across Colombo, there was a visible increase of security on Friday after the authorities and foreign embassies, including the UK and the US, warned of the possibility of a second wave of attacks. 

Muslim communities were asked to stay at home to pray on Friday rather than attend communal prayers in mosques that could also be targeted by extremists.  

Sri Lanka’s Muslim minority has been shocked to the core by the atrocity and fears repercussions. Amid the nationwide manhunt, an association of Islamic theologians urged Muslim women not to “hinder the security forces in their efforts” by wearing veils. 

The Sri Lankan authorities have confirmed that seven suicide bombers carried out the attacks, including Adbul Lathief Jameel Mohammed who studied engineering for a year in the UK. They said all the bombers came from a middle-class, educated background. 

In new details that emerged on Friday, the police said that the attackers had worked out at a local gym and by playing soccer using their authentic national identity cards. They added that the vehicles used in the attack were purchased from a car dealership in Kadawatha, a suburb of Colombo, the capital.

They said that the operator of a copper factory who was arrested in connection with the bombings had helped Mohideen make improvised explosive devices and purchase empty cartridges sold by the Sri Lankan military as scrap copper.

Ranil Wickremesinghe, the prime minister, has said investigators are still working to determine the extent of the bombers’ foreign links.

The Hindu, an Indian newspaper, reported on Wednesday that two of the suspects had recently returned from fighting in Syria and Iraq.

The prime minister admitted to Sky News that the authorities knew of the returnees from Syria but legally couldn’t do anything about it.

“We knew they went to Syria … But in our country, to go abroad and return or to take part in a foreign armed uprising is not an offence here,” he said. 

“We have no laws which enable us to take into custody people who join foreign terrorist groups. We can take those who are, who belong to terrorist groups operating in Sri Lanka.”

Paikiasothy Saravanamuttu, an analyst at the Centre for Policy Alternatives in Colombo, told the Telegraph that the country’s tourism industry would take a long time to recover from the attacks. 

“They’ve hit the very sector of the economy that had some momentum,” he said. “While the arguments are about it being part of Isis and geopolitical terrorism, the consequences of the attack are very specific to Sri Lanka.”

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