Another explosion rocked Sri Lanka’s capital Colombo, local news reports said. This was after a string of six near-simultaneous blasts in the early morning Sunday, which killed at least 156 people and injuring more than 500 individuals.
The latest explosion, the seventh, hit a hotel near the Colombo zoo in Dehiwala, adding two more deaths.
Six serial blasts hit three Sri Lankan churches and three five-star hotels at around 8:45 a.m. (local time) as Easter Sunday masses were being held in different parts of the country.
The strings of attacks were the first major bombing incident in Sri Lanka since the end of the civil war over a decade ago.
No one has claimed responsibility for the attacks yet, but the police chief of Sri Lanka had already warned authorities of possible suicide attacks ten days before the Sunday blasts.
An earlier foreign intelligence report warned that the National Thowheeth Jama’ath, a radical Muslim group in Sri Lanka, is planning to carry out suicide attacks targeting prominent churches as well as the Indian high commission in Colombo.
The group came under the radar last year when it was linked to the vandalization of Buddhist statues in various parts of the country.
