{"id":16355,"date":"2019-04-21T00:15:06","date_gmt":"2019-04-21T07:15:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lapost.us\/?p=16355"},"modified":"2019-04-21T00:15:06","modified_gmt":"2019-04-21T07:15:06","slug":"sri-lanka-church-and-hotel-explosions","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lapost.us\/?p=16355","title":{"rendered":"Sri Lanka Church and Hotel explosions"},"content":{"rendered":"

At least 100 people are reported to have been killed and hundreds more injured in explosions at churches and hotels in Sri Lanka.<\/p>\n

At least six explosions have been reported. Three churches in Kochchikade, Negombo and Batticaloa were targeted during Easter services.<\/p>\n

The Shangri La, Cinnamon Grand and Kingsbury hotels, all in Colombo, were also hit.<\/p>\n

Easter Sunday is one of the major feasts in the Christian calendar.<\/p>\n

Images on social media showed the inside of one of the churches – St Sebastian’s in Negombo – with a shattered ceiling and blood on the pews.<\/p>\n

Sri Lankan media report that foreign tourists may be among the casualties. One police source told Agence-France Presse at least nine had died.<\/p>\n

\"PriestsImage copyright<\/span>REUTERS<\/span><\/span>
Image caption<\/span>Priests at St Anthony’s Shrine in Kochchikade, one of the churches targeted<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Some media sources are putting the death toll even higher.<\/p>\n

Reuters quoted a police source as saying more than 50 died in Negombo alone. Hospital sources in Batticaloa said at least 27 people had died there.<\/p>\n

A hotel official at the Cinnamon Grand, near the prime minister’s official residence, told AFP the explosion there had ripped through a restaurant, killing at least one person.<\/p>\n

‘Horrible scenes’<\/h2>\n

President Maithripala Sirisena has issued a statement calling for people to remain calm and support the authorities in their investigations.<\/p>\n

PM Ranil Wickremesinghe is chairing an emergency meeting.<\/p>\n

\"Map\"<\/span><\/figure>\n

On Twitter, Finance Minister Mangala Samaraweera said the attacks appeared to be a “well-co-ordinated attempt to create murder, mayhem and anarchy” and had killed “many innocent people”.<\/p>\n

Another minister, Harsha de Silva, described “horrible scenes” at St Anthony’s Shrine in Kochchikade, saying he had seen “many body parts strewn all over”.<\/p>\n

No-one has yet said they were responsible for the attacks.<\/p>\n

There have been fears that returning fighters from the Islamic State group could pose a threat in the country.<\/p>\n

In the years since the end of Sri Lanka’s civil war, there has been some sporadic violence, with members of the majority Buddhist Sinhala community attacking mosques and Muslim-owned properties. That led\u00a0to a state of emergency being declared in March 2018<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

At least 100 people are reported...<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-16355","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lapost.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16355","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lapost.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lapost.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lapost.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lapost.us\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=16355"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/lapost.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16355\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":16356,"href":"https:\/\/lapost.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16355\/revisions\/16356"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lapost.us\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=16355"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lapost.us\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=16355"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lapost.us\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=16355"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}