Eight Easter Sunday bombings killed more than 200 people during a time of relative peace in an island nation just recently rocked by over two decades of civil war.
A series of bombings on Sunday morning killed more than 200 people at churches and hotels across Sri Lanka, a nation with a troubled history of inter-ethnic and faith-fueled violence.
The attacks appeared to target the country’s Christian community as scores celebrated the religion’s most sacred day, Easter Sunday. A number of the bombings occurred at churches while worshipers were attending mass.
Majority-Buddhist Sri Lanka is home to several major religious minorities, including Hindus, Muslims and Christians—predominantly Roman Catholic—which made up 12.6 percent, 9.7 percent and 7.4 percent of the country’s population, respectively, according to a 2012 estimate cited by the CIA World Factbook.
While Buddhists were largely comprised of the country’s Sinhalese ethnic group, Sri Lankan and Indian Tamils mostly adhered to Hinduism, with a strong Christian minority. Tamil-speaking Muslims, however, were considered Moors, as they traced their history back to Arab traders who settled in the region centuries ago.
Competing interests and armed conflict between these groups turned the small South Asian island state into a war zone between 1983 and 2009, largely pitting the mostly Sinhalese government against the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam. This separatist insurgent group also targeted Muslims, who have continued to suffer discrimination even in peacetime as evidenced by mostly Sinhalese riots that broke out in the eastern town of Ampara last year, resulting in massive destruction of property and at least two deaths.
Sri Lankan security personnel keep watch outside the church premises following a blast at the St. Anthony’s Shrine in Kochchikade in Colombo on April 21. Eight bombings killed more than 200 people during a time of relative peace in an island nation just recently rocked by over two decades of civil war.
