On 21 April 2019, Easter Sunday, three churches in Sri Lanka and three luxury hotels in the commercial capital, Colombo, were targeted in a series of coordinated Islamic State (IS)-related terrorist suicide bombings. Later that day, two smaller explosions occurred at a housing complex in Dematagoda and a guest house in Dehiwala. A total of 270 people were killed, with over 200 of them being Christians, including at least 45 foreign nationals, three police officers, and nine suicide bombers. An additional 500 were injured. The church bombings were carried out during Easter services in Negombo, Batticaloa and Colombo; the hotels bombed included the Shangri-La, Cinnamon Grand, Kingsbury and Tropical Inn. According to the State Intelligence Service, a second wave of attacks was planned, but was prevented due to government raids.
According to Sri Lankan government officials, all nine suicide bombers involved in the attacks were Sri Lankan citizens associated with National Thowheeth Jama'ath (NTJ), a local Islamist militant group founded by Zahran Hashim, and known for attacks against Buddhists and Sufis or the Jamathei Millathu Ibrahim (JMI), a smaller group of youth. On 23 April, State Minister of Defence Ruwan Wijewardene theorized that the attack was in retaliation for the Christchurch mosque shootings which occurred the month before on 15 March 2019. The direct linkage between the two attacks has been questioned by the government of New Zealand and by other experts. The NTJ had been stockpiling explosives since at least January 2019.
On 23 April 2019, the Amaq News Agency, a propaganda outlet for the Islamic State (IS), stated that "the perpetrators of the attack targeting the citizens of coalition countries and Christians in Sri Lanka were Islamic State fighters." Sri Lanka was not part of the anti-IS coalition, yet the overwhelming majority of those killed in the bombings were Sri Lankan citizens. IS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, who was previously believed to be either dead or retired, praised the attackers during an 18-minute video on a range of topics. The Criminal Investigation Department, however, stated that there was no evidence of IS's direct involvement.
Security lapses leading to the attack, and the Sri Lankan government's failure to act on intelligence were highlighted during inquiries into the attacks. On 12 January 2023, the Supreme Court of Sri Lanka ruled that the then-incumbent president Maithripala Sirisena and several other government authorities at the time failed to act on intelligence, and were ordered to pay compensation to victims.
Background
The main religions in Sri Lanka are Buddhism (70.3%), Hinduism (12.6%), Islam (9.7%) and Christianity (6.1%), with 82% of the Christians being Roman Catholics. The remaining Christians are evenly split between the Anglican Church of Ceylon and other Protestant denominations.
During the 2010s, a low but persisting number of attacks and threats were made against Christian congregations and individuals, as well as other religious minorities, by local monks, although they may or may not be actual members of the Buddhist clergy. Anglican Bishop of Colombo, Dhiloraj Canagasabey called for constitutional rights on religion to be protected. In 2018, the National Christian Evangelical Alliance of Sri Lanka (NCEASL) reported a large increase in the number of attacks against Christians in the country that year. This coincided with a Supreme Court ruling against a Catholic organisation in August, which deemed that proselytism was not protected by the constitution (though individual freedom of religion remained protected).
Easter Sunday is Christianity's holiest day and church attendance in Sri Lanka is very high on this day. This was the first time since 2009, the end of the Sri Lankan Civil War, that the country had experienced a major terrorist attack.
Islamic radicalisation
The Sri Lankan government was aware of some foreigners arriving in Sri Lanka to spread what Justice Minister Wijeyadasa Rajapakshe called Islamic extremism. In November 2016 he told parliament that 32 Sri Lankan Muslims from "well-educated and elite" families had joined the IS. On 25 April 2019, Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe revealed that the government had known of the Sri Lankan nationals who had joined Islamic State and returned to the country – but they couldn't be arrested, because joining a foreign terrorist organisation was not against the law.
In the aftermath of the bombings, investigations revealed that school textbooks for Islam published by the government also encouraged the radicalisation of Muslims. The school books since the 1980s called for the death sentence for those who leave Islam.
Prior to the attacks
Vice president of the Muslim Council of Sri Lanka Hilmy Ahamed had said about three years ago he warned military intelligence officials about the National Thowheeth Jama'ath, saying "targeting the non-Muslim community is something they encourage – they say you have to kill them in the name of religion".
Indian intelligence agencies provided specific information to Sri Lankan authorities about the method and target locations for the potential terrorist attacks to Sri Lankan authorities as early as 4 April, and again on the night before, and as close as two hours, before the first attack. This included information about the threat to churches, gathered from interrogation of a suspected IS recruit in Indian custody. The first public disclosure regarding the call made by Indian intelligence agencies on the day of the attack was brought to light by Asanga Abeyagoonasekera, then Director General of the Institute of National Security Studies Sri Lanka (INSSSL), during a 2021 interview with Chamuditha Samarawickrama.
The New York Times and AFP reported on a police chief warning security officials in an advisory ten days before the attacks of a threat to prominent churches from a radical Islamist group, National Thowheeth Jama'ath. No information in this regard had been passed to the senior politicians of the country; Minister Harin Fernando then tweeted images of an internal memo and report by the police intelligence of a terror attack planned by the founder of National Thowheeth Jama’ath, Mohammed Zahran (aka Zahran Hashim).
Investigators have said that Rilwan Hashim, brother of Zahran, had built the explosives alongside Mohammad Hasthoon. Zahran had claimed to have been appointed member of the Sri Lankan branch of Islamic State by one of its officials and to be receiving orders directly from Syria, a claim investigators believe to have been fabricated. Zahran held a meeting in early April 2019 with over a dozen people in Panadura, where they decided upon the attack. Some participants however wanted to target the Buddhist festivals including Vesak.
The cohorts of Hashim had stayed in contact through WhatsApp and Telegram. The planning for a future attack may have begun in mid-2018, though the group hadn't selected any target. Investigators believe that the Easter attack plan came into being much later, with roles of perpetrators being decided upon only shortly before Easter. They had communicated through Threema a few weeks before the attack.
In January 2019 a stockpile of suspicious explosives was discovered near the Wilpattu National Park which contained 100 kilos of high explosives and 100 detonators. The police confirmed that this was from a "newly formed radical Muslim group". On 16 April a parked motorcycle in Kattankudy carrying explosives detonated without casualties during a lightning storm.
Presidential Commission of Inquiry into the Easter Sunday bombings report reveals that in January 2019, four months before the attack, Asanga Abeyagoonasekera, then Director General of the Institute of National Security Studies Sri Lanka (INSSSL), prepared and submitted a Monthly Threat Forecast (MTF) to President Maithripala Sirisena. The report highlighted a significant national security threat following the discovery of detonators in Wilpattu. This MTF was a confidential document intended exclusively for the President's review.
Attacks
Christians were attending Easter Sunday services when the bombings took place, targeting churches and hotels around Sri Lanka. The sequence and coordination of the bombings were planned to cause maximum destruction, targeting Christians during worship services across the island nation, and targeting guests during breakfast in beachfront hotels in the capital. All six of the first set of explosions targeting the churches and hotels were carried out by suicide bombers.
The first blast took place in the Shrine of St. Anthony, a historic Catholic church in the capital, where 93 people were killed. The second blast took place in St. Sebastian's Church in the Christian-majority suburb of Negombo, to the north of Colombo and Sri Jayawardenepura Kotte. 116 people were killed at St. Sebastian's Church. St. Sebastian's is also close to Sri Lanka's main airport, Bandaranaike International Airport, where security was heightened.
On the other side of the island in Batticaloa, a bomb blast 15 minutes later killed 31 people at the Protestant evangelical Zion Church.
The Church bombings resulted in the deaths of more than 200 Christians.
Churches
The Catholic Shrine of St. Anthony in Kotahena, Colombo, was the first to be hit, followed by the Catholic Church of St. Sebastian in Negombo. Sri Lankan news media initially reported at least 93 people killed at St. Sebastian's. In October 2019, the BBC reported that a total of 116 people had died in the St. Sebastian's bombing, including 27 children.
The Zion Church in Batticaloa, a Protestant congregation, was also bombed. Local news reported at least 31 killed in Batticaloa, with 9 of these reported by a police official to be tourists. A hospital official in the region said that more than 300 people had been admitted following the explosion. The BBC reported that the suicide bomber had attempted to enter the church under the guise of filming it, but was denied access because of the ongoing service. Instead, he detonated his bomb in the churchyard, killing many children from the attached Sunday school who were taking a break.
Hotels
Three 5-star hotels on the beachfront in central Colombo were attacked around the same time as the churches: the Shangri-La Hotel, the Cinnamon Grand Colombo and The Kingsbury.
The Shangri-La bombers struck at 08:57 hours (UTC+05:30) during breakfast in the Table One Restaurant on the hotel's third floor, which was reportedly full of foreign tourists who made up the bulk of the hotel's clientele.
The suicide bomber who struck at the Taprobane restaurant in the Cinnamon Grand hotel had checked into the hotel with a false name the night before, claiming to be on a business trip. The bomber entered the queue of the packed restaurant's breakfast buffet the next morning and detonated explosives strapped to his back as he was about to be served. One of the hotel's managers who was welcoming guests was among those killed instantly.
The reception hall of a guest house, the Tropical Inn in Dehiwala, was also attacked later in the day, with two deaths reported. Later on during investigations, It was found that the bomber's original target had been the Taj Samudra Hotel in Colombo. CCTV footage given to the media by the hotel shows the bomber attempting to detonate his backpack three times in the dining area and upon failing, leaving the premises at 8.49 a.m.
The Kingsbury hotel management resumed their operations on 24 April 2019 followed by Cinnamon Grand few days later; Shangri-La partially reopened on 12 June 2019.
Residence
A further bombing occurred later in the day when police executed a breach and clear at a suspect's house in the suburbs of Colombo; in Dematagoda killing three police officers and four others at the premises including the suicide bomber. The pregnant suicide bomber, whose three children were killed in the blast, was the wife of Ilham Ibrahim, the Shangri-La suicide bomber, and the sister-in-law of Inshaf Ahmed Ibrahim, the Cinnamon Grand suicide bomber.
Aftermath
The government closed facilities for security; the Defence Ministry issued a police curfew starting at 18:00 local time on the day of the attacks, and imposed a temporary social media ban, whilst the Minister of Education, Akila Viraj Kariyawasam, had all schools closed for the following two days. The Colombo Stock Exchange announced that its operations will be temporarily suspended following the terror attacks, not opening as planned on 22 April 2019.
An improvised explosive device was found near the Bandaranaike International Airport in Colombo and was dismantled by the Sri Lankan Air Force.
On 22 April, the Special Task Force (STF), the elite counter-terrorism unit of the Sri Lanka Police, located a van belonging to the attackers near St. Anthony's Shrine, the site of one of the prior day's blasts. Upon inspection, the vehicle was found to have been rigged with 3 bombs. After the STF's bomb-defusing unit evacuated the surrounding area, the bombs were detonated simultaneously during a defusing attempt. The same day, police reportedly found 87 items of bomb paraphernalia at the Bastian Mawatha Private Bus Station in Pettah.
On 25 April, the Criminal Investigation Department (CID) released names and photos of six suspects wanted in connection over the Easter Sunday bombings, seeking public assistance. On 28 April, police confirmed two of the suspects, Mohomed Iwuhaim Saadiq Abdul Haq and Mohomed Iwuhaim Shahid Abdul Haq, who were arrested in Nawalapitiya and would be handed over to the CID.
After the attacks, any garment covering the face including the burqa and niqab, was temporarily banned in Sri Lanka.
Victims
The bombings killed 269 people and injured at least 500. Initially, 359 fatalities were reported; the Ministry of Health later reduced the number by 106 after cross-referencing DNA samples to body parts. The majority of the fatalities were Sri Lankans, while 49 foreigners were among those killed. In 2024, a woman injured in the St. Sebastian's Church bombing died of her injuries, making her the 270th victim.
Some notable victims include: