Karnataka Chief Minister HD Kumaraswamy confirmed on Monday that four members of his party, the Janata Dal (Secular), were amongst the five Indians killed in the series of simultaneous 8 blasts that rocked the Sri Lankan capital of Colombo and other places on Sunday.
Expressing shock over the devastating incident which killed nearly 290 people, including 5 Indians, and injured more than 500, Karnataka chief, took to Twitter to give away the names of the 4 JDS workers killed and the rest 3 who went missing. A 7-member team of JDS workers was touring Colombo (Sri Lanka) when this dastardly incident transpired.
I am deeply pained at the loss of our people in the #colombo attacks. Out of the seven missing after the #TerrorAttack, four have been declared dead. Their names are
– Lakshmana Gowda Ramesh
– K M Lakshminarayan
– M Rangappa
– KG Hanumantharayappa— H D Kumaraswamy (@hd_kumaraswamy) April 22, 2019
The three others who are missing are H ShivuKumar,A Maregowda and H Puttaraju. The Chief Secretary’s office is in constant touch with the Resident Commissioner at Karnataka Bhavan, New Delhi, and the families of the victims and the missing persons for further information on them
— H D Kumaraswamy (@hd_kumaraswamy) April 22, 2019
The press officer of Indian High Commission in Sri Lanka, Niteen Yeola, has released the names of the five Indian victims killed in the Sri Lankan bombing attacks. Apart from the four JDS workers, one Narayan Chandrashekhar has also been killed in the blast.
Yeola added that there are a few more Indians injured in the attacks, but their names have not been released.
The Indian high commission in Sri Lanka has just released two more names of Indians killed in yesterdays attacks. They are Vemurai Tulsiram and SR Nagaraj.
Sunday morning was marred with eight dastardly explosions in Sri Lanka. The blasts occurred at around 8.45am (local time) as the Easter Sunday masses were in progress in churches, police spokesman Ruwan Gunasekera said.
The string of simultaneous and coordinated blasts occurred at 3 churches, namely, St. Anthony’s Kochchikade Church in Kotahena, Zion Church in Batticaloa and St. Sebastian Church in Negombo. At the same time, three luxury hotels in Colombo were also targetted: Kingsbury, Shangri-La and Cinnamon Grand.
Two more blasts reportedly occurred in a hotel near Dehiwala Zoo in Colombo and in Sri Lankan suburb of Demantagoda.
Sri Lanka’s PM Ranil Wickremesinghe has reportedly admitted that they had been warned about possible attacks by an Islamist terrorist group. PM Wickremesinghe stated that despite the warning by intelligence agencies, Sri Lanka ‘failed’ to take adequate measures.
As per a report on News18, top intelligence sources have informed that Zahran Hasheem of the radical Islamist group National Thowheed Jama’ath (NTJ) had planned to carry out an Istishhad (suicide attack) in Sri Lanka. They had also conducted a dry-run and had placed explosive-laden motorcycle at Palmunai near Kattanakudi on April 16.
The report states that India had shared the intelligence input that the NTJ might carry out attacks in Churches and a hotel frequented by Indian nationals. The information was reportedly shared on April 4.
Yesterday, it was also reported that Sri Lanka’s police chief Pujuth Jayasundara had sent out a warning to top officials about the threat 10 days ago.
Sri Lanka’s government has said it will compensate the families of victims caught up in the attacks on Easter Sunday that killed 290 people.
24 people have so far been arrested in connection to the blasts. A curfew had been in place all over the island nation from Sunday evening to Monday morning. Social media and messaging services have also been shut down to curb the spreading of fake news.
In the latest, the Sri Lankan government confirmed that a local organisation named ‘National Thowheed Jama’ath’ (NTJ) was responsible for the terrorist attacks across three cities of Sri Lanka. Senaratne, in her statement, also said that the attacks were a “colossal intelligence failure” and admitted that despite receiving a prior warning, the attacks could not be prevented.
