A Catholic town at the center of Sri Lanka’s deadly attacks on WTOP| NEGOMBO, Sri Lanka (AP) — The seaside Sri Lankan fishing town of Negombo has long been called “Little Rome,” a reference to its many churches and its place at the center of the country’s small Catholic community. But it was also…
NEGOMBO, Sri Lanka (AP) — The seaside Sri Lankan fishing town of Negombo has long been called “Little Rome,” a reference to its abundance of churches and its place at the center of the country’s small Catholic community.
On Monday, it was a town in mourning.
Small white flags flew in house after house near St. Sebastian’s Church, a sign that someone who lived there had died. Groups of people visited, paying their respects. On Easter Sunday, a bomb blast ripped through St. Sebastian’s, one of a half-dozen coordinated attacks on churches and high-end hotels that killed nearly 300 people. At least 110 were killed at St. Sebastian’s, said Cardinal Malcolm Ranjith, making it the day’s most deadly bombing.
Charles Fernando, 32, who was among the neighborhood residents walking between houses, pointed to a home where he said nearly everyone had been killed or injured.
“We had war for 30 years but there were no bomb blasts in Negombo,” he said. “We will never forget this.”
During Sri Lanka’s long and bloody civil war, Negombo, about an hour north of the capital, Colombo, was largely spared the violence that raged elsewhere in the country.
