POLICE RECOVER 87 BOMB DETONATORS AT COLOMBO BUS STATION

Sri Lankan soldiers stand guard as security personnel inspect the debris of a car after it explodes when police tried to defuse a bomb near St. Anthony’s Shrine in Colombo/ AFP

Police on Monday said they had found 87 bomb detonators at a Colombo bus station, a day after a string of attacks on churches and hotels that killed nearly 300 people.

A statement said police found the detonators at the Bastian Mawatha Private bus stand, 12 of them scattered on the ground and another 75 in a garbage dump nearby.

There was no immediate information on injuries in the blast, or how large it was. The explosion happened around 50 metres from the St Anthony’s Shrine, one of three churches targeted in a string of suicide bombs on Sunday that killed nearly 300 people.

Government spokesman Rajitha Senaratne said investigators were looking at whether the National Thowheeth Jama’ath (NTJ) group had “international support” for the deadly Easter Sunday attacks on churches and luxury hotels.

Wary of stirring ethnic and religious tensions, officials have provided few details about 24 people arrested since the attacks.

Not much is known about the NTJ, but documents seen by AFP show Sri Lanka’s police chief issued a warning on April 11, saying a “foreign intelligence agency” had reported the group was planning attacks on churches and the Indian high commission.

The group has previously been linked to the vandalising of Buddhist statues.

“We don’t see that only a small organisation in this country can do all that,” said Senaratne.

“We are now investigating the international support for them, and their other links … how they produced the suicide bombers here, and how they produced bombs like this.”