Easter Sunday attacks: Lankan Police release details of suicide bombers

Sri Lankan police released on Wednesday the details of the attackers and their relatives linked to the country's worst terror attacks that left nearly 360 people dead. According to the findings, the suicide bombers involved in the Easter Sunday attacks had a close family connection.

Police spokesman Ruwan Gunasekera released the details of the suicide bombers involved in the series of coordinated bombings at three churches and three hotels across the country.

• Mohamed Cassim Mohamed Zahran, aka Zahran Hashmi, the leader of banned local terror outfit National Thawheeth Jamath (NTJ), who blew himself up in the posh Shangri-La hotel came from the Muslim majority area in Kathankudi in the eastern province. His driver Adam Lebbe Gaffoor is currently in the custody of the police's crime investigations department.
• Zahran's wife and his daughter have survived the suicide bombings at Sainthamuruthu in the east when the military raided a terrorist safe house. They are undergoing treatment at the Ampara hospital in the east.
• His brother Mohamed Nazar Mohamed Azath was the suicide bomber at the Zion church in the eastern town of Batticaloa while his another brother Achchi Mohamed Mohamed Hasthun was the bomber at the St Sebastian's Church at Katuwapitiya, Negombo, the Western coastal town
• Father, two brothers of Mohamed Ibrahim Ilham Ahmad, second bomber at the Shangri La hotel, are under CID arrest. Fathima Ibrahim who had detonated herself when the military raided the house of the Ibrahim brothers in Dematagoda in Colombo, was Ilham's wife.
• The St Sebastian's church bomber Hasthun's wife Sarah also died in the blast in the same safe house
• Alawddin Ahmad Muath was the bomber at the St Anthony's Chuch Colombo city. His brother has been arrested by the CID for alleged links.
• Kingsbury Hotel bomber Mohamed Assam Mohamed Mubarak's wife is also under CID custody
• Ilham's brother Mohame Ibrahim Inshaf Ahmad, who blew himself up in Cinnamon Grand Hotel, was the owner of the copper factory in the Colombo suburb of Wellampitiya. His wife is also under CID custody currently.
• Abdul Latiff Jameel Mohamed was the suicide attacker at the Tropical Inn in the Colombo suburb of Dehiwela. His wife and her two brothers are in the Terrorism Investigation Division (TID) custody.

Gunasekere said some of the identifications are currently being verified through DNA tests.

Eight explosions rattled various suburbs in the Sri Lankan cities of Colombo, Negombo, Kochchikede and Batticaloa as the Christian community celebrated Easter Sunday on April 21. The blasts shattered a decade of peace in the island nation since the end of the brutal civil war with the LTTE. The civil war ended with the defeat of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE), which ran a military campaign for a separate Tamil homeland in the northern and eastern provinces of the island nation for nearly 30 years.