The names of the nine people who authorities say detonated suicide bombs in Sri Lanka on Easter Sunday, killing 257 people, have been released and their assets will be seized in accordance with anti-terror laws, according to reports.
Among the eight men and one woman were two brothers from a wealthy Colombo family involved in spice exports, according to police spokesman Ruwan Gunasekera, the UK’s Guardian reported.
Ilham Ahmed Mohamed Ibrahim attacked the Shangri-La hotel in the company of Zahran Hashim, the leader of the National Thowheed Jamath jihadist group behind the attacks claimed by ISIS, officials said.
Ilham’s older brother Inshaf Ahmed targeted the nearby Cinnamon Grand Hotel, according to the report.
Meanwhile, the Kingsbury hotel was bombed by Mohamed Azzam Mubarak Mohamed, whose wife is in police custody, Gunasekera said.
Local resident Ahmed Muaz, whose brother has been arrested, attacked St. Anthony’s Church and Mohamed Hasthun bombed St. Sebastian Church in Negombo, north of the capital, the police spokesman said.
Mohamed Nasser Mohamed Asad, another local resident, launched a deadly attack at the Christian Zion Church in the eastern district of Batticaloa, he said.
Abdul Latheef, who had studied in both the UK and Australia, detonated his explosives at a guest house near Colombo after failing to set a bomb off at a luxury hotel.
Finally, Fathima Ilham, the wife of the younger of the two brothers, blasted a device strapped to herself, killing her two kids and three cops who rushed to the family home in Colombo.
“We are going to use prevention of terrorist financing laws to confiscate their property,” Gunasekera said.
Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe said the suicide plot was hatched by a secretive group that drew its members from the National Thowheed Jamath and another local Islamist organization, Jammiyathul Millathu Ibrahim.
“It’s a small group, deliberately kept small,” Wickremesinghe told the Wall Street Journal, adding that the government was investigating “how deep and how strong” the group’s links with ISIS were.
Jammiyathul Millathu Ibrahim has recruited for ISIS since at least 2015, a government adviser told the newspaper.
Meanwhile, Catholic services are being canceled for a second weekend in the capital after the government warned of more possible attacks.
The Rev. Edmund Tillakaratne, spokesman for the Colombo diocese, said Thursday that Cardinal Malcolm Ranjith had canceled all Sunday services based on the latest security reports.
With Post wires