Local militants had intl help in carrying out Easter Sunday attacks – Sri Lanka’s health minister

An international network helped to perpetrate the bloody Easter Sunday attacks in Sri Lanka, the nation’s health minister said. A series of coordinated bombings killed 290 people and left hundreds injured.

“We do not believe these attacks were carried out by a group of people who were confined to this country,” Minister of Health, Nutrition and Indigenous Medicine, Rajitha Senaratne said on Monday.

He stressed that there was “an international network,” without which the attacks “could not have succeeded.”

Suicide bombers set off explosives in several hotels and Catholic Churches in different parts on Sri Lanka. An apartment complex was also targeted, and a bomb was found and defused near the Colombo International airport.

A total of 24 people were arrested in connection with the attack. No one has yet claimed the responsibility for the bombings, but Senaratne said that the attackers belonged to Islamist group National Thowheeth Jama’ath (NTJ). All suicide bombers were Sri Lankan nationals, the minister said.

The government, meanwhile, extended the curfew in the country’s largest city, Colombo, and is set to declare the nationwide emergency, the officials said.

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