Sri Lanka Army’s chief has said that some of the suicide bombers who carried out the country’s worst terror attack on Easter Sunday visited Kashmir and Kerala for “some sorts of training” or to “make some more links” with other foreign outfits.
It is the first time that a top Sri Lankan security officialhas confirmed the militants’ visit to India which had shared intelligenceinputs with Colombo ahead of the attack.
Nine suicide bombers, including a woman, carried out aseries of devastating blasts that tore through three churches and three luxuryhotels on April 21, killing 253 people and injuring over 500 others.
In an interview to BBC, Lieutenant General MaheshSenanayake, Commander of the Army, divulged some details on the movements of thesuspects in the region and also international links.
“They (the suspects) have gone to India, they’ve gone toKashmir, Bangalore, they’ve travelled to Kerala state. Those are theinformation available with us,” he said.
Asked what activities they were doing in Kashmir and Kerala,the Army chief said: “Not exactly, but definitely in some sorts of training orto make some more links towards the other organisations outside the country”.
The Islamic State claimed the attacks, but the governmentblamed local Islamist extremist group National Thowheeth Jamaath (NTJ).
Sri Lanka banned the NTJ and arrested over 100 people inconnection with the blasts.
About the possibility of an involvement of a foreign group,the Commander said that by looking at the pattern of operation and the placesthat the suspects travelled, there has to be some outside involvement of someleadership or instructions.
Asked why the threats were not taken more seriously afterreceiving information from India, Senanayake said: “We had some information andintelligence-sharing, situations and military intelligence on a differentdirection and the others were different and there was a gap that everybodycould see today”.
He said that as the Chief of the Army, he believes thateverybody who is responsible for intelligence-gathering and the nationalsecurity is to be blamed, including the political hierarchies.
Asked why Sri Lanka was targeted, the Commander said: “Toomuch of freedom, too much of peace for the last 10 years. People forget whathappened for 30 years. People are enjoying peace and they neglected security”.
He was referring to the three-decade civil war with theLiberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) which ended in 2009 after claiming atleast 100,000 lives.”We are deployed on the ground to give confidence to the public andensure there is no violence or escalation of communal riots in this country.Have trust on the armed forces and the Police of this country who will bringnormalcy as soon as possible,” the Army chief added.