Sri Lanka admits ‘major’ lapse

Sri Lanka’s government yesterday acknowledged “major” lapses over its failure to prevent the horrific Easter attacks that killed more than 350 people, despite prior intelligence warnings. Recriminations have flown since Islamist suicide bombers blew themselves up in packed churches and luxury hotels on Sunday, in attacks claimed by the Islamic State group. Overnight, security forces using newly granted powers under the country’s state of emergency arrested 18 more suspects in connection with the attack, as the toll rose to 359.

Police have so far arrested 58 people, all Sri Lankans, and security remains heavy, with bomb squads carrying out several controlled explosions of suspect packages on Wednesday. But the government faces anger over revelations that specific warnings about an attack went ignored.

Sri Lanka’s police chief issued a warning on April 11 that suicide bombings against “prominent churches” by a local Islamist group, National Thowheeth Jama’ath were possible and alerts had been given by a foreign intelligence agency.  CNN reported that Indian intelligence services had passed on “unusually specific” information in the weeks before the attacks, some of it from an IS suspect in their custody.

But that information was not shared with the prime minister or other top ministers, the government says. “It was a major lapse in the sharing of information,” deputy defense minister Ruwan Wijewardene conceded at a press conference yesterday. “The government has to take responsibility.”

Chilling footage:

Chilling CCTV footage has emerged showing one of the attackers calmly patting a child on the head and shoulder moments before he walked into the packed St Sebastian’s church and detonated his bomb among those attending Easter Mass, unleashing carnage.

President Maithripala Sirisena, who is also defense and law and order minister, pledged Tuesday to make “major changes in the leadership of the security forces in the next 24 hours”.  “The restructuring of the security forces and the police will be completed within a week,” he said. New details emerged about some of the bombers on Wednesday, with Wijewardene saying one had studied in Britain and then did post-graduate studies in Australia before returning to Sri Lanka.

“Most of them are well-educated and come from the middle, upper-middle-class families, so they are financially quite independent and their families are quite stable financially, that is a worrying factor in this,” the minister added.