Easter Day bomb blasts at three Sri Lankan churches and three luxury hotels killed 156 people, including 35 foreigners, and wounded more than 400, hospital and police officials said, following a lull in major attacks since the end of the civil war 10 years ago.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In just one church, \nSt. Sebastian\u2019s in Katuwapitiya, north of Colombo, more than 50 people \nhad been killed, a police official told Reuters, with pictures showing \nbodies on the ground, blood on the pews and a destroyed roof.The three \nhotels hit were the Shangri-La Colombo, Kingsbury Hotel and Cinnamon \nGrand Colombo. It was unclear whether there were any casualties in the \nhotels.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
There were no immediate claims of responsibility for the \nattacks in a country which was at war for decades with Tamil separatists\n until 2009 during which bomb blasts in the capital were common.Prime \nMinister Ranil Wickremesinghe called a national security council meeting\n at his home for later in the day.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
One of the explosions was at \nSt Anthony\u2019s Church in Kochcikade, Colombo.\u201cOur people are engaged in \nevacuating the casualties,\u201d a source with the bomb squad said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
St.\n Sebastian\u2019s church posted pictures of destruction inside the church on \nits Facebook page, showing blood on pews and the floor, and requested \nhelp from the public.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Last year, there were 86 verified incidents\n of discrimination, threats and violence against Christians, according \nto the National Christian Evangelical Alliance of Sri Lanka , which \nrepresents more than 200 churches and other Christian organisations.\n\n<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Easter Day bomb blasts at three Sri Lankan churches and three luxury hotels killed 156 people, including 35 foreigners, and wounded more than 400, hospital and police officials said, following a lull in major attacks since the end of the civil war 10 years ago. In just one church, St. Sebastian\u2019s in Katuwapitiya, north of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":59627,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[87],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-59626","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-world"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/59626","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=59626"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/59626\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":59628,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/59626\/revisions\/59628"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/59627"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=59626"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=59626"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=59626"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}