Sri Lanka blasts toll rises to 290; 13 suspects arrested

Colombo: The toll in a series of eight blasts targeting mostly churches and hotels in Sri Lanka on Sunday has risen to 290, a police spokesman said Monday.

More than 500 people were wounded in the blasts, he added, in the deadliest violence since the end of the country’s long-running civil war a decade ago.

Meanwhile, Sri Lankan police have arrested 13 men in connection with bomb blasts on churches and hotels that killed more than 200 people, officials said Monday.

Authorities have not made public details on those held after Sunday’s attacks. But a police source told AFP the 13 were detained at two locations in and around Colombo.

The source said the 13 men are from the same radical group.

At least two of the eight attacks were carried out by suicide bombers, according to police and other sources, and three police were killed when another suicide bomber detonated explosives during a raid on a house where suspects were.