Sri Lanka

COLOMBO, Sri Lanka (AP) — Sri Lanka’s president lifted a nationwide ban on social media sites Tuesday, a day after he used emergency powers to ban veils worn by conservative Muslim women as part of a security clampdown following Easter suicide bomb attacks.

President Maithripala Sirisena ended the blocking of Facebook, WhatsApp, YouTube and other popular sites, but asked the public to “act in a responsible manner” on social media, according to a government statement.

COLOMBO, April 29 (Xinhua) -- Sri Lankan President Maithripala Sirisena on Monday appointed an acting police chief, though police officials said that the incumbent Chief Pujith Jayasundara was yet to give in his resignation.

In a statement from the president's media division, it said that President Sirisena had appointed Deputy Inspector General C.D. Wickramaratne as the Acting Inspector General of Police (IGP).

COLOMBO, April 27 (Xinhua) -- Sri Lankan President Maithripala Sirisena banned the National Thawheed Jammath (NTJ) and another radical group suspected to be behind the Easter Sunday explosions which killed over 250 people and injured 500, the President's Office said in a statement on Saturday.

The statement said that under the emergency regulations, President Sirisena had taken steps to declare the NTJ and Jamathei Millathu Ibraheem (JMI) in Sri Lanka as banned organizations.

COLOMBO, Sri Lanka (AP) — At 12:10 p.m. Friday, men and boys in a Muslim neighborhood in Sri Lanka’s capital did something everyone had warned them not to do: They came together to pray.

Hundreds gathered at the Masjidus Salam Jumma mosque for their communal Friday prayers, one of many mosques that conducted services despite warnings of retaliatory violence.

COLOMBO, Sri Lanka (AP) — Militants linked to Easter suicide bombings opened fire and set off explosives during a raid by Sri Lankan security forces on a house in the country’s east, leaving behind a grisly discovery Saturday: 15 bodies, including six children.

The gunbattle that began Friday night and the carnage that followed come amid widespread fear of more attacks as officials hunt for militants with explosives believed to still be at large after the coordinated bombings of churches and luxury hotels that killed more than 250 nearly a week ago.

COLOMBO, April 26 (Xinhua) -- Sri Lankan President Maithripala Sirisena said on Friday that terrorists who carried out the Easter blasts have a link to drug trade.

The president told a press conference in Colombo that the attacks may have been carried out sooner than planned due to his anti-drug campaign.

Sirisena said, "Let's not forget the connection between the war against narcotics and terrorism."

Director General of Health Services, Dr. Anil Jasinghe in a statement today said that death toll of last Sunday's attacks stands at 253, not 359 as earlier reported by the media.

Authorities have said that deaths resulting from Easter Sunday's bombings in Sri Lanka are not as high as initially thought. The original death toll was thought to be around 359.

25 April 2019; News.LK: Director General of Government Information Nalaka Kaluwewa inform that the Government urges the General Public to accept only the official news confirmed by the Department of Government Information, Police Media Spokesman or three force Media Spokesmen when concerning the information on present security operations against terrorism.

COLOMBO, April 24 (Xinhua) -- Investigations by Sri Lankan police have confirmed that nine suicide bombers were involved in Sunday's attacks, eight of whom have been identified, State Defense Minister Ruwan Wijewardene said on Wednesday.

The leader of a local extremist group that carried out the bombings was one of the suicide bombers, the minister told a press conference.

Wijewardene said, so far 60 suspects had been arrested over the explosions and 32 of them had been handed over to the Criminal Investigations Department.

MOSCOW, April 23. /TASS/. Sri Lankan Minister of Mass Media and State Minister of Defense Ruwan Wijewardene stated on Tuesday that according to investigators local extremists committed explosions in churches and hotels on the island in response to the mosque attacks in New Zealand’s city of Christchurch in which 50 people were killed. The TV channel News First quoted the minister of mass media on Twitter.