ONE more explosion was reported today in Sri Lanka’s capital Colombo, police said, the eighth explosion in the country in a single day.

Police said the blast hit the suburb of Orugodawatta in the north of the capital, but there were no further details on what was targeted.

Sri Lanka’s defence ministry has ordered a night-time curfew.The curfew will begin today at 6pm local time (1230 GMT) and run until 6am local time (0030 GMT), the ministry said.

Nearly 160 people have been confirmed dead so far in the string of attacks targeting hotels and churches.

Shortly before the latest attack, a seventh blast hit a hotel in Sri Lanka’s capital, killing at least two people, a police spokesman said.

Police spokesman Ruwan Gunasekera said the seventh blast hit a hotel in the southern Colombo suburb of Dehiwala.

Thirty-five foreigners are reported to be among those killed and wounded in the string of blasts at hotels and churches in Sri Lanka as worshippers attended Easter services, a police official told AFP.

The explosions hit three upscale hotels in the capital, where a church was also targeted. Two additional churches were hit, one near Colombo and the other in the east of the country, police said.

A hospital source said Americans, British and Dutch citizens were among those killed in the blasts.

The toll is expected to climb as authorities come to grips with the full extent of the attacks.

President Maithripala Sirisena in an address said he was shocked by the explosions and appealed for calm.

Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe wrote on Twitter: “I strongly condemn the cowardly attacks on our people today. 

“I call upon all Sri Lankans during this tragic time to remain united and strong. Please avoid propagating unverified reports and speculation. The government is taking immediate steps to contain this situation.”

Suicide bombers planning to hit ‘prominent churches’

The nature of the blasts was not immediately clear and there were no immediate claims of responsibility.

But 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 NTJ (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.

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

The first explosions were reported at St Anthony’s Church in Colombo and St Sebastian’s in the town of Negombo just outside the capital.

At least 160 people were injured in the St Anthony’s blast had been admitted to the Colombo National Hospital by mid-morning, an official told AFP.

Earlier, police initially said a church in the north of the capital and in the town of Negombo, just outside Colombo, were hit.

“A bomb attack to our church, please come and help if your family members are there,” read a post in English on the Facebook page of the St Sebastian’s Church at Katuwapitiya in Negombo.

A police official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said at least 45 people were killed in Colombo, where at least four hotels and a church were hit.

Another 67 were killed in an attack on a church in Negombo north of the capital, with another 25 dead at a church in the town of Batticaloa, in the east of the country.

At least one of the victims was killed in Colombo’s Cinnamon Grand Hotel, near the prime minister’s official residence, where the blast ripped through a restaurant, a hotel official told AFP.

Photos circulating on social media showed the roof of one church had been almost blown off in the blast.

The floor was littered with a mixture of roof tiles, splintered wood and blood.

Several people could be seen covered in blood, with some trying to help those with more serious injuries.

The images could not immediately be verified.

Shortly after those blasts were reported, police confirmed three hotels in the capital had also been hit, along with a church in the town of Batticalao, in the east of the country.

An official at the Batticaloa hospital told AFP more than 300 people had been admitted with injuries following the blast there.

Only around 6% of mainly Buddhist Sri Lanka is Catholic, but the religion is seen as a unifying force because it includes people from both the Tamil and majority Sinhalese ethnic groups.

There have been no attacks in Sri Lanka linked to foreign Islamist groups, despite local media reports that a 37-year-old Sri Lankan was killed in Syria in 2016 while fighting for the Islamic State group.

In January, Sri Lankan police seized a haul of explosives and detonators stashed near a wildlife sanctuary following the arrest of four men from a newly formed radical Muslim group. – AFP, April 21, 2019.

MORE TO COME