Sri Lankan authorities said Friday they’re hunting for as many as 140 people suspected of links to the Islamic State terror group in an evolving investigation following the Easter Sunday bombings that killed more than 250 people at churches and hotels in the South Asian nation.
While police have already arrested 76 people in and around the capital city of Colombo, including several foreigners from Syria and Egypt, Friday’s announcement by Sri Lankan President Maithripala Sirisena signaled a tightening of the government’s focus on the Islamic State’s role in the attacks.
Mr. Sirisena told reporters the government believes some Sri Lankan youths have been involved with the extremist group since 2013, Reuters reported, which also cited the president as lamenting that top Sri Lankan defense and police chiefs had not shared pre-attack warnings with him ahead of last weekend’s bombings.
The Islamic State, which has recently lost all the territory it once held thousands of miles away in Iraq and Syria, has made a series of claims of responsibility for the Easter Sunday bombings. The claims have increased concern among international intelligence agencies over the group’s staying power and connectivity on the global stage.
Sri Lankan authorities have blamed the attacks on National Towheed Jamaar, a little-known Islamic extremist group in the island nation. Its leader, alternately known as Mohammed Zahran or Zahran Hashmi, became known to Muslim leaders three years ago for his incendiary speeches online, The Associated Press reported.
A video believed to have been released by Islamic State leaders in hiding this week showed what were purported to be National Towheed Jamaar members pledging loyalty to Islamic State leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi.
U.S. officials say they believe Baghdadi has slipped into hiding following the collapse of the group’s hold on territory in Syria and Iraq amid intensive military campaigns there, including by U.S. Special Forces.
The Sri Lankan government’s widening crackdown and investigation, meanwhile, has set tensions on edge with the South Asian nation’s Muslim and Christian populations. Authorities are reported to have advised Muslims to pray at home Friday and avoid gathering at mosques for Friday prayers. Christians were also advised not to gather at churches over the weekend.
Religious tensions have simmered in Sri Lanka following the 1983 to 2009 civil war, in which a Hindu militant group known as the Tamil Tigers fought — violently and unsuccessfully — to carve out an independent state from the country’s majority Buddhist government.
About 70 percent of Sri Lanka’s 23 million people are Buddhists, with Hindus making up about 17 percent, Muslims roughly 10 percent and Christians a bit more than 7 percent of the population, according to the CIA’s World Fact Book, an unclassified global information resource online.
• Guy Taylor can be reached at gtaylor@washingtontimes.com.
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