The world was shocked by Easter Sunday bombings in Sri Lanka. So too were local authorities.
But they should not have been. Officials have admitted they had failed to act on a clear tip-off from their own and international intelligence agencies that a horror was in the making.
The death count from the April 21 attacks edged towards 300 by yesterday evening with one in 10 victims said to be foreign.
Government ministers even named the group they believe responsible:
National Thowfeek Jama’ath. However, the attacks, nine in total on three cities, came after “dysfunction” at the heart of government meant warnings were overlooked.
Health minister Rajitha Senaratne said international intelligence agencies warned of the attacks several times starting on April 4.
On April 9, the defence ministry wrote to the police chief with intelligence that included the group’s name, he said.
On April 11, police wrote to the heads of security of the judiciary and diplomatic security division, he added.
It was not immediately clear what action, if any, was taken in response.
Authorities said little was known about the group except that its name had appeared in intelligence reports.
Because of political dysfunction within the government, Mr Seranatne said,
Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe and his Cabinet were kept in the dark about the intelligence until after the attacks.
President Maithrela Sirisena, who was out of the country at the time of the attacks, ousted Mr Wickremesinghe in late October and dissolved the Cabinet.
The Supreme Court eventually reversed his actions, but the prime minister has not been allowed into meetings of the Security Council since October.
All of the bombers were Sri Lankan citizens, but authorities suspect foreign links, Mr Senaratne said.
Some 24 people were arrested. At least seven bombers died in the attacks. Earlier, Ariyananda Welianga, a government forensic crime investigator, said an analysis of the attackers’ body parts made clear that they were suicide bombers.
#He said most of the attacks were carried out by a single bomber, with two at the Shangri-La Hotel in the capital, Colombo, where Briton Anita Nicholson and her two children Alex, 14, and Annabel, 11, were killed.
The bombings, Sri Lanka’s deadliest violence since a devastating civil war ended a decade ago on the island nation, killed at least 290 people and wounded more than 500 others, police spokesman Ruwan Gunasekara said yesterday.
Other ministers suggested inaction was to blame for the death toll.
Telecommunications minister Harin Fernando tweeted: “Some intelligence officers were aware of this incidence.
Therefore there was a delay in action. Serious action needs to be taken as to why this warning was ignored.”
He said his father had heard of the possibility of an attack as well and had warned him not to enter popular churches.
And Mano Ganeshan, the minister for national integration, said his ministry’s security officers had been warned by their division about the possibility that two suicide bombers would target politicians.
Cardinal Malcolm Ranjith, the Archbishop of Colombo, said the attacks could have been thwarted.
“We placed our hands on our heads when we came to know that these deaths could have been avoided. Why this was not prevented?” he said.
Many of the dead were Catholics. The Sri Lankan government initially lifted a curfew that had been imposed during the night but reinstated it yesterday afternoon.
Most social media remained blocked yesterday after officials said they needed to curtail the spread of false information and ease tension in the country of about 21 million people.
Prime Minister Mr Wickremesinghe said he feared the massacre could trigger instability in Sri Lanka, and vowed to “vest all necessary powers with the defence forces” to take action against those responsible.
The scale of the bloodshed recalled the worst days of Sri Lanka’s 26-year civil war, when the Tamil Tigers, from the ethnic Tamil minority, sought independence from the Sinhalese-dominated country.
The Sinhalese are largely Buddhist. The Tamils are Hindu, Muslim and Christian.
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