Raids and police curfews have shut down areas of eastern Sri Lanka, and Catholic leaders have cancelled Sunday Masses indefinitely
AMPARA, Sri Lanka — Militants linked to Easter suicide bombings opened fire and set off explosives during a raid by Sri Lankan security forces on a house in the country’s east, leaving behind a grisly discovery Saturday: 15 bodies, including six children.
The gunfight Friday came after police tipped off soldiers about a suspected safe house near the town of Sammanthurai in Sri Lanka’s Ampara District, where authorities said the militants set off three explosions and opened fire. Gunasekara said officers acting on information from intelligence officials also found 150 sticks of blasting gelatin and 100,000 small metal balls, as well as a van and clothing suspected of being used by those involved in the Easter attacks. Suicide bomb vests often are packed with such balls to increase the shrapnel in the explosion, making them even deadlier.
Yashwant Kumar Singh, 23, a worker from India, said he wants to go back to his homeland because he fears another attack. “If it only happened on one day, then that wouldn’t have been so difficult, but bombs are going off here every day. That is why there is an atmosphere of fear. We are feeling very scared,” he said.
The Easter attackers are “not Muslims. This is not Islam. This is an animal,” said Akurana Muhandramlage Jamaldeen Mohamed Jayfer, the chairman of the mosque. “We don’t have a word to curse them.”A local television channel showed people on a bus asking a Muslim woman wearing a traditional burqa to either remove it or leave the bus. She later left the bus.
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