A local militant group was responsible for a series of Easter Sunday suicide bombings in Sri Lanka that killed at least 290 people and wounded over 500 others, a government official said on Monday. Health Minister Rajitha Senaratne said seven Sri Lankan bombers from the local National Thowheeth Jama’ath (NTJ) group were linked to the near-simultaneous attacks on three churches and three luxury hotels in and around Colombo. Senaratne said while the group was domestic, foreign links were suspected in the country’s worst attacks for more than a decade. Witness recalls panic, chaos as bombs rip through Sri Lanka’s capital Not much is known about the NTJ, a radical group that has been linked to the vandalising of Buddhist statues. Sri Lankan President Maithripala Sirisena said he would seek foreign assistance to track down international terrorist links. “The intelligence reports [indicate] that foreign terrorist organisations are behind the local terrorists. Therefore, the president is to seek the assistance of the foreign countries,” he said in a statement. The president said he would also declare a nationwide emergency that will go into effect at midnight. Sri Lankan government forensic crime analyst Ariyananda Welianga said an assessment of the attackers’ body parts collected from the scenes showed that the attacks were coordinated suicide bombings. Four of the bombs went off at roughly the same time, at 8.45am, with two others coming within 20 minutes. The explosions at the fourth hotel and the house occurred hours later in the afternoon. Welianga said two people were involved in the attack at the Shangri-La Hotel. One bomber each attacked the Cinnamon Grand and Kingsbury hotels and St Anthony’s Shrine in Colombo, St Sebastian’s church in the city of Negombo and Zion Church in the city of Batticaloa. “Guests who had come for breakfast were lying on the floor, blood all over,” said a Kingsbury Hotel employee. “We just picked up everyone, dead or alive and evacuated them.” Police said on 24 people had so far been arrested over the attacks. While there had not been any immediate claim of responsibility, documents showed 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. Donald Trump said ‘millions’ died in Sri Lanka terror attacks in botched tweet Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe acknowledged that “information was there” about possible attacks and that an investigation would look into “why adequate precautions were not taken”. Telecommunications Minister Harin Fernando tweeted: “Some intelligence officers were aware of this incidence. Therefore there was a delay in action. Serious action needs to be taken as to why this warning was ignored.” He said his father had even heard of the possibility of an attack and had warned him not to enter popular churches. Mano Ganeshan, the minister for national integration, said the security officers within his ministry had been warned by their division about the possibility two suicide bombers would target politicians. Police spokesman Ruwan Gunasekara said the Criminal Investigation Department investigating the blasts will look into the reports. Sri Lankan authorities also said Monday they had successfully defused another bomb close to Colombo’s main airport. A police source said a locally manufactured “home-made” pipe bomb had been found late Sunday on a road leading towards the main terminal, exacerbating disruptions at the Bandaranaike International airport. “It was a crude six-foot pipe bomb that was found by the roadside,” an air force spokesman said. “We have removed it and safely defused it at an air force location.” Two Chinese nationals among the dead in Sri Lanka Easter bombings In the aftermath of the attacks, Sri Lanka’s government blocked social media access to prevent “wrong information” from spreading in the country of 21 million people. The US State Department issued a revised travel warning that said “terrorist groups” were continuing to plot possible attacks. “Terrorists may attack with little or no warning,” it said in the revised warning. The warning level was set at two on a scale where four means do not travel. Possible targets included tourist locations, transportation hubs, shopping malls, hotels, places of worship, airports and other public areas, it said. Of the 290 who were killed, police said at least 37 were foreigners, including Chinese, Japanese, Indian, Australian and Danish nationals. Australia’s prime minister on Monday said two Australian citizens died and another two were injured. Denmark’s richest man Anders Holch Povlsen and his wife lost three of their four children who were on holiday in Sri Lanka. Two Chinese citizens were killed and another five were seriously injured in the attack. The Chinese Embassy in Sri Lanka had contacted the families of the deceased, People.com.cn reported. Five other Chinese nationals remained missing. They were students from the Ministry of Natural Resources’ First Institute of Oceanography who were reportedly going to take part in a study in the Indian Ocean. “It is an annual scientific expedition programme and they were on the way to replace the 10 others who had completed their rotation,” a staff member told the Beijing News . “Some sustained bruises on the leg and one could hardly hear after the blast.” Among the churches targeted was the historic St Anthony’s Shrine, a Catholic Church in Colombo, where the blast blew out much of the roof. Bodies lay on the ground of the church, covered in patterned scarves and white sheets, some of them stained with blood. Shattered roof tiles and shards of glass littered the floor, along with chunks of plaster blasted from the walls by the explosion. Sri Lanka’s Minister of Economic Reforms, Harsha de Silva, described “horrible scenes” at St Anthony’s church. “I saw many body parts strewn all over,” he tweeted. Witness NA Sumanapala was near the church when the blast happened. “I ran inside to help. The priest came out and he was covered in blood,” he said. “It was a river of blood.” A manager at the Cinnamon Grand, near the prime minister’s official residence in Colombo, said a suicide bomber blew himself up at the hotel’s restaurant. “He came up to the top of the queue and set off the blast,” the manager said. Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe urged people to “hold our unity as Sri Lankans” and pledged to “wipe out this menace once and for all”. Meanwhile there were chaotic scenes at Colombo airport as worried travellers who had just arrived in the country formed a huge queue at the only taxi counter that was open, and watched a television screen for updates. Kishu Gomes, chairman of the Sri Lanka Tourism Development Authority, said holidaymakers were flocking back to the airport, cutting short their vacations in the wake of the blasts. He could not give an exact count of the number of people leaving, but it could run into the thousands. Tour operators in India, the biggest source market for visitors to Sri Lanka, were also cancelling trips for clients, he said. Ethnic and religious violence has plagued Sri Lanka for decades, with a 37-year conflict with Tamil rebels followed by an upswing in recent years in clashes between the Buddhist majority and Muslims. Catholics make up around 6 per cent of the island nation’s population, which is a patchwork of different religious and ethnic groups dominated by Buddhist Sinhalese. While there have been attacks on Christians, their community had been left relatively unscathed until now. Rucki Fernando, a Christian Sri Lankan, said: “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,” he added. R eporting by Agence France-Presse, Reuters, Associated Press and Bloomberg