(CBN News) – At least 207 people were killed and hundreds more injured in near-simultaneous blasts that rocked three churches and three luxury hotels in Sri Lanka on Easter Sunday, a security official said, in the worst spout of violence in the South Asian country since its civil war ended a decade ago. Two of the blasts were suspected to have been carried out by suicide bombers, according to the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak with reporters. Worshippers and hotel guests were among the dead, the official said.
The magnitude of the bloodshed recalled Sri Lanka’s decades-long civil war, when separatist Tamil Tigers and other rebel groups targeted the Central Bank, a shopping mall, a Buddhist temple and hotels popular with tourists. No one immediately claimed responsibility for Sunday’s blasts. Sri Lanka has long faced a bitter ethnic divide between the majority Sinhalese and the minority Tamils, fueling the civil war as Tamil militants tried to carve out their own homeland. READ MORE
