Preliminary investigations have shown thecoordinated bombingsthat killed more than 320 people in churches and hotels across Sri Lanka Sunday were carried out “in retaliation” for last month’sshootings at two New Zealand mosques, the country’s state minister of defense said.
“The preliminary investigations have revealed that what happened in Sri Lanka was in retaliation for the attack against Muslims in Christchurch,” Ruwan Wijewardene said Tuesday, according toCBS News.
New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern was reluctant to support the claim that the attacks were linked, only saying in a statement that the investigation was still in its early stages, and that New Zealand had yet to see any “intelligence” that could generate such a conclusion, according to theAssociated Press.
St. Sebastian’s Church.Chamila Karunarathne/AP/REX/Shutterstock
The APreportsthat Wijewardene provided no evidence to back his retaliation claims, which came as the Islamic State or Iraq and Syria (ISIS) claimed responsibility for the bombings.
TheAssociated Press, citing Sri Lanka’s minister of tourism John Amaratunga, reported that 39 foreign tourists were killed in the bombings.
Among those were two Americans:Dieter Kowalski, a 40-year-old Denver man visiting the country on business, andKieran Shafritz de Zoysa, an 11-year-old fifth-grader on leave from school in Washington, D.C., to live in his mother’s native Sri Lanka.
CBS News reports that at least 40 suspects, all Sri Lankan nationals, have been taken into custody for questioning.
source: people.com
