The Deacon's Bench
Sri Lankan security forces said they found the bodies of 15 people, including four suicide bombers who had detonated their explosives, in a house on Saturday morning, hours after a gun battle erupted as they raided it in search of suspects linked to the Easter Sunday bombings.
Brig. Sumith Atapattu, a spokesman for the Sri Lankan military, said six children were among the dead, the four bombers had blown themselves up as security forces closed in on the house around midnight, and one of the dead had been killed in the gun battle with security forces.
The house, in a town on Sri Lanka’s east coast, was cordoned off after the overnight raid, but security forces waited until dawn to search it because it is in a crowded neighborhood.
Brigadier Atapattu said it was “too early to tell” whether the house was directly linked to the group that carried out the coordinated bombings on Sunday at churches, luxury hotels and other sites in Sri Lanka, killing more than 250 people.
The house is in a village called Bolivarian, part of the densely populated, mostly Muslim town of Sainthamaruthu. It is about 25 miles from Batticaloa, where one of the church bombings took place.
A man who lives in the area said members of the local mosque federation, to which he belongs, had become suspicious about the tenants in the house, which he said was twice the size of many others in the area. He said two members of the federation asked the tenants to identify themselves on Friday afternoon. The tenants said they did not have identification with them, but promised to provide it the next day, he said.
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