By Kashif Hussain in The Express Tribune, May 20, 2019 KARACHI: Trade between Pakistan and Sri Lanka has come to a screeching halt. The reason behind the stoppage is said to be the rising violence against the Muslim community in Sri Lanka in the wake of recent terrorism and suicide attacks over there, which resulted in heavy casualties. “Rice and textile exports to Sri Lanka from Pakistan have stopped. Potato export has also reduced drastically,”…
Posts published in “Sri Lanka”
report in Daily Times, April 27, 2019 Sri Lankan Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe has said that his government will, if necessary, seek Pakistan’s help to trace the terrorists involved in the recent Easter Sunday bombings. In an exclusive interview with an international newspaper published on Friday, Wickremesinghe pointed out that Pakistan had in the past ‘fully supported Sri Lanka’s war on terror’. “If necessary, we will seek their help to trace the terrorists and eliminate…
report in The Express Tribune online, April 26, 2019 Sri Lankan authorities swept up more people, including foreigners, for questioning on Thursday as they probed deeper into the Easter Sunday bombings, which killed 359 people in potentially the deadliest operation claimed by the militant Islamic State. Police said an Egyptian and several Pakistanis were among those detained overnight, although there was no immediate suggestion they had direct links to the attacks on three churches and…
AS the dust clears from Easter Sunday’s appalling bloodbath in Sri Lanka, a grim reality is emerging: the militant Islamic State group — heretofore thought of as a mostly vanquished force in parts of Iraq and Syria — is still active and still capable of causing major havoc. On Tuesday, IS, through its Amaq propaganda arm, claimed “Islamic State fighters” were responsible for the deadly bombings in Sri Lanka, in which several churches and hotels…
Report in South China Morning Post, Apr 25, 2019 Attacks against mosques, shrines and followers of Sufi sheikhs in Sri Lanka more than a decade ago pointed to early warning signs of fundamentalism taking root among a sliver of the country’s Muslims. The Easter attacks in Sri Lanka that killed more than 350 people in churches and hotels showed how the warnings went largely unheeded. It also exposed how a legacy of civil war, marginalisation,…
Pressure builds on Sri Lankan officials as Isis claims Easter attacks by Jason Burke in The Guardian, Apr 24, 2019 Islamic State has claimed responsibility for the Easter bombings in Sri Lanka that killed more than 320 people, the group’s Amaq news agency has said, with experts saying the attacks bear the hallmarks of the group. It is the deadliest overseas operation claimed by Isis since it proclaimed its “caliphate” almost five years ago, and…
Reuters in Dawn, April 24th, 2019 COLOMBO: Sri Lankan intelligence officials were tipped off about an imminent attack by Islamist militants hours before a series of suicide bombings killed more than 300 people on Easter Sunday, three sources with direct knowledge of the matter said. Three churches and four hotels were hit by suicide bombers on Sunday morning, killing 321 people and wounding 500, sending shockwaves through an island state that has been relatively peaceful…
By Wang Wenwen in Global Times, Apr 23, 2019 The ghastly bombings of hotels and churches in Sri Lanka on Easter Sunday highlighted the need for Asian countries to strengthen coordination to prevent such tragedies from happening again. And the role of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) should be enhanced. The violence broke a decade-long peace in the country which had been dogged by its civil war until 2009. The Sri Lankan government described the…
(The writer is a retired military officer and president of Bangladesh Institute of Peace and Security Studies) The violent incident that took place in Sri Lanka on Sunday has been the largest terrorist attack in recent times. So far no international outfit or any group within Sri Lanka has taken responsibility for the attacks. However, evidence indicates the attacks were carried out by a religion-based group, though their identity remains unclear. Only recently there was…
By Indrani Bagchi in the Times of India, Updated: Apr 22, 2019, 10:10 IST NEW DELHI: The eight serial blasts that shook Sri Lanka on Easter and reverberated around the world have drawn attention to an arc of radicalisation stretching from the Maldives to Bangladesh where Islamic State-inspired modules have been regularly linked to terror incidents. Though counter-intelligence experts are cautious in the absence of an acknowledgement, topping the shortlist of suspects is Thawheed Jamaat,…
Detentions in Sri Lanka: edit in The Express Tribune, April 26th, 2019.
Several Pakistanis have been detained in Sri Lanka over the recent serial bombings. A police spokesman said on Thursday in Colombo that a group of Pakistanis had been detained overnight among an unspecified number of foreign nationals for overstaying their visas. This makes it clear that they have no direct links to the attacks on three churches and four hotels. The attacks killed 359 people and also wounded around 500 in possibly the deadliest operation…