No Mass for Sri Lanka’s Catholics
AMPARA, Sri Lanka The effects of Sri Lanka’s Easter suicide bombings reverberated across two faiths Sunday, with Catholics shut out of their churches for fear of new attacks, left with only a televised Mass, and Muslim women ordered to stop https://www.fanclub-fulton-smith.de wearing Canada Goose Outlet veils in public.
Many across the nation knelt before their televisions as Cardinal Malcolm Ranjith, the archbishop of Colombo, delivered a homily before members of the clergy and the country’s leaders canada goose clearance in a small chapel at his residence in the capital. Embassy in Colombo warned that more militants remained on the loose with explosives a week after bombings claimed by the Islamic State group and aimed at churches and hotels killed more than 250 people.
Before services began, the Islamic State group canada goose outlet new york city claimed three militants who blew themselves up Friday night after cheap canada goose exchanging fire with police in the country’s east. Investigators sifting through that site and others buy canada goose jacket cheap uncovered a bomb making operation capable of spreading far more destruction.
“This is a canada goose outlet in usa time our hearts are tested by the great destruction that took place last Sunday,” Ranjith told those watching across the nation. “This is a time questions such as, does God truly love us, does he have compassion toward us, can arise in human hearts.”
Later on Sunday, President Maithripala Sirisena banned all kinds of face coverings that may conceal people’s identities. The emergency law, which takes effect Monday, prevents Muslim women from veiling their faces.
The decision came after the Cabinet had proposed laws on face veils at a recent meeting. It had deferred the matter until talks with Islamic clerics could canada goose outlet black friday be held, on the advice of Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe.
In a rare show of canada goose outlet store unity, Sirisena, Wickremesinghe uk canada goose and opposition leader Mahinda Rajapaksa had attended the canada goose coats Mass in person. Their political rivalry and government dysfunction are blamed for a goose outlet canada failure to act upon near specific information received from foreign intelligence agencies that preceded the bombings, which targeted three churches and Canada Goose online three luxury hotels.
Police said they had arrested 48 suspects over the last 24 hours as checkpoints mounted by all of Sri Lanka’s security forces sprung up across this canada goose factory outlet country of 21 million people.
The government also warned that it would crack down on those spreading false information and making inflammatory remarks.
Police entered the mosque, located in Kattankudy in eastern Sri Lanka, and stopped an interview among foreign journalists and mosque officials. Zahran and masked others had pledged their loyalty to IS leader Abu Bakr al Baghdadi before carrying out the attacks, showing the danger the extremist group poses even after losing all its territory in Iraq and Syria.
On Friday night, a confrontation with police sparked a firefight with the militants in Kalmunai, some 225 kilometres (140 miles) northeast of Colombo. Sri Lanka’s military said the gunfire and later suicide blasts killed canada goose outlet nyc 15 people, including six children.
On Sunday, the Islamic State group claimed three of the militants who blew themselves up there. In a statement carried by the extremists’ Aamaq news agency, IS identified the bombers by their noms du guerre as Abu Hammad, Abu Sufyan and Abu canada goose outlet canada al Qa’qa. It said they opened fire with automatic weapons and “after exhausting their ammunition, detonated. their explosive belts.”
Police spokesman Ruwan Gunasekara said a woman and a 4 year old child found wounded after the gunbattle have been identified as Zahran’s wife and daughter.
At the main police station in Ampara, an outdoor stage now holds what police recovered after the firefight. The IS aligned militants had created a bomb making factory at the home, complete with laboratory style beakers and thick rubber gloves.
Bags of fertilizer, gunpowder and small ball bearings filled boxes. Police found tens of litres (gallons) of acids, used to make the fire of the blast more lethal.
“At the hospital a lot more people died. That’s why,” he said, nodding toward the acids. “It made the wounds incurable.”
The Canada Goose Parka bombers likely carried two rectangular detonators in their pockets Canada Goose sale similar to the ones recovered, the investigator said. A red switch armed the explosives, while a light teal button detonated the bombs hidden canada goose outlet uk sale inside of their large backpacks.
Along with the acids, the bombs contained a mixture of fertilizer, gunpowder, ball bearings and explosives typically used by quarries to blast loose rocks, the investigator said. Those explosives made the bombs powerful canada goose outlet enough to blow the roof off of St. Sebastian’s Church in Negombo, he said, referring to one of canada goose outlet the churches near Colombo targeted in the Easter attacks.
The Sri Lankan navy controls the sale of the mining explosives and investigators already have begun tracing the serial numbers off of the plastic sticks, he said.
Police also recovered religious tracts in canada goose outlet sale Tamil glorifying suicide bombings, saying they granted the attacker direct entrance to heaven. The investigator contrasted that to the Tamil Tigers, a separatist group the government defeated in 2009 after a 26 year civil war.
“Their only intention is to kill as many as possible,” the investigator said. “That is different than the Tamil Tigers. They wanted to control land. These people want to kill as many as possible.”.