Sri Lanka says Easter blasts carried out by local Islamist group assisted by 'international network'

The Sri Lankan government declared a nation-wide state of emergency effective midnight on Monday in response to a spate of deadly suicide bomb attacks that killed more than 300 people on Easter Sunday.

Earlier, the government said that it believes a local Islamist extremist group called National Thowheeth Jama'ath (NTJ) was behind the attacks, and was also investigating whether the group had "international support".

"We don't see that only a small organization in this country can do all that," government spokesman and cabinet minister Rajitha Senaratne said. "We are now investigating the international support for them, and their other links, how they produced the suicide bombers here, and how they produced bombs like this."

Meanwhile, it was revealed that a breakdown of communication led to a crucial lack of preparedness ahead of the attacks targeting churches and hotels.

Police had arrested 40 people in connection with the devastating bomb blasts as of Tuesday morning. A government forensic analyst told AP that 7 suicide bombers were implicated in the attacks. The powerful blasts -- six in quick succession and then two more hours later -- injured hundreds.

The government also imposed a nationwide curfew and curbed social media access to restrict "wrong information" spreading in the country of 21 million people. 

The curfew was lifted on Monday, but reinstated, as the US State Department warned that "terrorist groups continue plotting possible attacks in Sri Lanka," according to its travel warning. 

87 detonators were found by police at Colombo's main bus station on Monday, stoking fears that there could be more to come. Another bomb was also found in the afternoon next to St Anthony's church in Kochchikadze, which was hit in the Sunday blast. 

The bomb exploded during the disposal operation.

'The prime minister was not informed'

Questions were raised regarding the authorities' handling of the situation, as information was coming in that showed intelligence officials had known about the possibility of attacks.

Documents seen by AFP show that Sri Lanka's police chief Pujuth Jayasundara issued an intelligence alert to top officers 10 days ago, warning that suicide bombers planned to hit "prominent churches".

"A foreign intelligence agency has reported that the National Thowheeth Jama'ath is planning to carry out suicide attacks targeting prominent churches as well as the Indian high commission in Colombo," the alert said.

There were reports on Monday that Indian intelligence was at the origin of these reports. 

In a press conference in which he pledged that the government would rebuild the churches and compensate the victims, Senaratne said information was received by Sri Lanka officials on April 4th. According to him, the prime minister was not updated.

“On the 9th of April, the chief of national intelligence wrote a letter and in this letter many of the names of the members of the terrorist organisation were written down,” Senaratne said. “The prime minister was not informed by these letters and revelations”.

Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe, speaking late Sunday, acknowledged "information was there" about possible attacks and that an investigation would look into "why adequate precautions were not taken". 

The defense portfolio is currently in the hands of the president, Maithripala Sirisena - and the country's two top men are political rivals. This could have added to the tensions, with Senaratne implying that the potential lack of coordination could have been at the source of the intelligence failure. 

“This is the only country where when the prime minister summons the security council they don’t assemble,” the former dentist said.

The NTJ is a radical Muslim group in Sri Lanka that was linked last year to the desecration of Buddhist statues.

Sri Lanka was the first country to witness the widespread use of suicide bombing as a tool of armed conflict, with the Tamil Tigers appropriating the efficient use of the deadly terror tactic. 

These attacks were the worst act of violence to hit the country in the decade since the end of a bloody civil war that killed up to 100,000 people.

For many in Sri Lanka, the apparently coordinated attacks brought back painful memories of life during the long-running conflict, when bomb blasts were a frequent occurrence.

Rucki Fernando, a Christian Sri Lankan, told AFP: "We haven't experienced anything like this in the last 10 years."

"There is a lot of fear, not just in the Christian community, but among everyone."    

Only around six percent of mainly Buddhist Sri Lanka is Catholic, and the country is a patchwork of different religious and ethnic groups, dominated by Buddhist Sinhalese.

Recent years have seen growing sectarian tensions, including accusations of hate crimes by extremist Buddhist monks against minority Muslims.

There have been no attacks in Sri Lanka linked to foreign Islamist groups, but in January, Sri Lankan police seized a haul of explosives and detonators following the arrest of four men from a newly formed radical Muslim group.

AFP contributed to this report.