The serial bomb blast on Easter Sunday in Sri Lanka has claimed about 300 lives so far with about 500 people injured. The bomb blasts occurred in churches holding Easter services even while high-end hotels were targeted. This attack was clearly well-planned and intended to hit specific targets and it comes nearly a decade after the civil war that rocked Sri Lanka and had killed nearly 100,000 civilians and combatants. The bomb blasts were aimed at the Christian community who are a minority in Sri Lanka and who had been targeted in the past too. Sri Lankan authorities have arrested eight people so far. They believe that a local Islamist extremist group the National Thowheeth Jama’ath (NTJ) was behind the deadly suicide bomb blasts. The Sri Lankan police had apparently issued a warning on April 11 that some foreign intelligence agency had claimed that the group was planning attacks on churches and the Indian High Commission. Despite such intelligence inputs the island nation was caught unawares. It is also not understood as to why the Indian High Commission should be the target of attack except that the radicals belong to a brotherhood that spans continents.
As is the usual case, social media access was quickly curbed in order to arrest the dissemination of news within the country of 21 million people and also across continents. A nationwide curfew was also imposed. The powerful blasts first occurred at six places; two more occurred two hours later. Preliminary investigations reveal that suicide bombers were responsible for the blasts. There is of course very little anyone can do to prevent suicide bombers from achieving their grand plans. In nearly all cases involving the highest human casualties such as the bombing of the twin towers in the US on September, 11, 2001 and several such terror attacks in India and elsewhere the perpetrators were suicide bombers. Former Prime Minister of India Rajiv Gandhi too was blown to smithereens by a woman suicide bomber. Every part of the world is today afflicted by radicals that believe in terror tactics to gain notoriety. The gunman who shot people inside the Al Noor mosque last month in Christchurch, New Zealand was a radicalized Christian. Those who shot the church goers in Sri Lanka are radicalized Muslims. It’s time for nations to try and fathom the reasons behind this rapid radicalization of individuals belonging to different religions. No religion teaches its adherents to harm other humans, especially those offering prayers. It is ironic that places of worship have today become the most vulnerable.