Bad news to start the day — there was a horrific terrorist attack in Sri Lanka:
Sri Lanka attacks
• Six blasts hit churches & hotels
• At least 137 dead
• Hundreds injuredLatest developments: https://t.co/TkH5p7oXQN pic.twitter.com/HAr7Eeumij
— BBC Breaking News (@BBCBreaking) April 21, 2019
Early reports say three churches and three hotels were bombed simultaneously. No one seems to know who or why so far. There will be no satisfactory answers to those questions. There never are.
VeniceRiley
We usually have no real news coverage overnight. I need the white noise; So I often turn on BBC News just to track Brexit and catch some real international coverage. I’m watching right now and it is horrible. My sister and her SO were just there a few years back for the Tooth Festival. My thoughts are with the lost and their families.
JPL
Another explosion at a different hotel. This is just so sad. .
opiejeanne
Terrible. I know the point is to scare people and make them feel helpless, but dammit it’s working on me.
Betty Cracker
It’s an awful thing. Looks like the U.S. ambassador to Sri Lanka is a career foreign service officer with a lot of experience. That’s encouraging from an aid and/or investigation coordination standpoint.
opiejeanne
@Betty Cracker: That’s a good thing. I looked at The Guardian and found that the blood banks are full because people in Sri Lanka rushed to donate as soon as they heard, and they’re being asked to hold off until they announce they need more People can be so, so good, or they can be devils. .
Mary G
It was about 8:45 am on Easter Sunday, so you know the churches were full.
Betty Cracker
AFP’s Twitter feed says there have been a total of eight explosions now — the seventh was at a hotel, and the eighth at a housing complex. The government shut down social media and messaging services and imposed a curfew.
tobie
This is horrible. Apparently the bombs were set to go off as people were arriving for Easter services. Sri Lankans — both Sinhalese and Tamils — have suffered so much for so long and just when we thought the civil war was behind them, the country has to be rocked by violence again.
West of the Rockies
Ah, religious fundamentalists… Whatever their stripes, they are all terrible.
Villago Delenda Est
Someone wants to draw attention to their cause, whatever their cause is.
They’ve drawn attention to Sri Lanka…now they’re waiting for just the right moment to claim credit, and broadcast their cause.
Sean
@Villago Delenda Est: I would assume some outside support here with a larger goal of creating a Buddhist, Christian, and Hindu mob backlash against SL’s Muslim minority and then use that to recruit in other locales outside of SL. SL has highly politically factionalized security services which probably made this coordinated attack easier to pull off than in other countries. Hoping the country can keep it together in the coming weeks and months.