Sri Lanka president has called for the resignation of both the national head of police and the country’s defense secretary after security forces failed to act on warnings before Easter suicide bombings that killed over 350 people.
President Maithripala Sirisena’s office announced that he asked for the resignations on Wednesday.
Mr. Sirisena said during a televised speech yesterday that he planned to change the head of the defense forces within 24 hours.
The Islamic State group has claimed responsibility for Sunday’s attack, which struck churches and hotels in the island nation.
A Sri Lankan official has blamed breakaway members of two obscure local extremist Muslim groups.
Among those least surprised, perhaps, by the Islamic State’s claim of responsibility for the Easter Sunday suicide bombings that killed at least 321 people in churches and hotels in Sri Lanka was Anne Speckhard, the head of the International Center for the Study of Violent Extremism think tank. During her career, Speckhard has interviewed more than 600 terrorists and their associates, including dozens of Islamic State defectors and returnees.
She said she was at a United Nations conference in Colombo, Sri Lanka’s capital, in February when a Sri Lankan intelligence officer approached her expressing concern about rising Islamist extremism in the island nation, which has been largely peaceful since a civil war ended about a decade ago. On Tuesday, in a statement issued on the social media app Telegram, the Islamic State said it had targeted Christians as well as citizens from countries involved in the coalition to fight the Islamic State.