Sri Lanka observes 3-minute silence as death toll rises to 310 in Easter Sunday attacks
Colombo: Sri Lanka observed a nationwide three-minute silence Tuesday to pay homage to more than 300 people killed in the gruesome Easter Sunday bombings, the country's worst terror attack blamed on a local previously little-known Islamist outfit.
National flags were lowered and people bowed their heads as the silence began at 8:30 am local time, the time the first of the attacks occurred on Sunday.
"We have declared today a day of national mourning, we urge people to raise a white flag in honour of the victims," said Kamal Padmasiri, Secretary to the Ministry of Home Affairs.
He said a 3-minute silence was observed nationwide and the national flag will be flown at half-mast.
Police spokesman Ruwan Gunasekera said the death toll in a series of devastating blasts that tore through churches and luxury hotels in Sri Lanka had risen to 310.
"The death toll has now gone up to 310", Gunasekera said.
Seven suicide bombers believed to be members of the National Tawheed Jamath (NTJ) - carried out a series blasts that ripped through three churches and luxury hotels on Sunday, killing over 300 people and wounding more than 500 others, including 8 Indians, in the country's worst terror attack.
A string of eight blasts were reported on Sunday, including at three churches in Negombo, Batticaloa and Colombo's Kochchikade district during Easter services. The Shangri-La, Kingsbury and Cinnamon Grand luxury hotels, all in the capital, were also targeted.
No group has claimed responsibility for the attacks, but police have arrested 24 people - mostly members of the NIJ - in connection with the blasts.
The funerals of most of the victims at the St Sebastian's Church in Katuwapitiya, Negombo will be held this afternoon.
The office of Cardinal Malcolm Ranjith said that he would be personally attending the funerals held in the predominant Catholic region in the western coastal district.
"There will be a mass funeral for 60 of the dead at the St Sebastian's Church," a spokesman said. Sri Lanks's Parliament will meet in a special session this afternoon.
Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe and leader of the opposition Mahinda Rajapaksa will make statements on the attacks.
The curfew which was imposed at 8 pm last night was lifted at 4 am on Tuesday.
For the first time since the attack, the traffic returned to roads in Colombo where security had been heightened with the presence of troops.
The emergency regulations that would allow police and the troops sweeping powers to arrest and detain suspects came into force last night. Parliament will ratify the emergency regulations tomorrow, officials said.
The suicide bombings struck three churches and three luxury hotels Sunday in the island nation's deadliest violence since a devastating civil war ended in 2009.
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.
The LTTE collapsed in 2009 after the Lankan army killed its supreme leader Velupillai Prabhakaran. The war is thought to have killed between 70,000 and 80,000 people.
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If Constitution amendment bill is passed, democracy will be finished in India: Priyanka
New Delhi (PTI): In a stinging attack, Congress leader Priyanka Gandhi Vadra on Thursday said the government began finishing off democracy by putting pressure on institutions, such as the Election Commission (EC) and the judiciary, but now, an "open attack" has been launched on democracy with the Constitution amendment bill.
Participating in a debate in the Lok Sabha on three bills introduced for amendments in the women's-quota law and setting up a delimitation commission, Priyanka Gandhi asked why can't the government give 33 per cent reservation to women on the current 543 seats of the Lok Sabha.
She said the bill talks of increasing the number of Lok Sabha seats to up to 850 -- to be done by a delimitation commission on the basis of the 2011 Census data.
"This seems fine on the surface but the real meaning comes to the fore when one carefully reads it. It smells of politics," the Congress leader said.
She said on reading the fine print, it shows that the three members of the delimitation commission will decide the fate of the states and their representation in Parliament.
"The government began finishing off democracy by putting pressure on institutions, such as the Election Commission, the judiciary, the media etc., but now, an open attack on democracy is being launched," Priyanka Gandhi said.
If this Constitution amendment bill is passed in Parliament, democracy will be finished in India, she added.
The Congress MP also narrated a background to the issue of women's reservation in legislative bodies.
"This issue is close to the heart of every woman. There is a background to this issue. The prime minister said this issue was blocked for 30 years. This was started by a person called Nehru. Not the Nehru they avoid so much but Motilal Nehru, who as the president of a committee prepared a list of 19 rights which were then passed as a resolution at the Karachi session of the Congress and formed the basis of giving women equal rights in Indian politics," she said.
She said it was Rajiv Gandhi who, as the prime minister, brought a bill for women's reservation in panchayats and nagarpalikas and finally, the bill for it was passed during the P V Narasimha Rao government of the Congress.
"Under the UPA, this was passed in the Rajya Sabha but a consensus could not be reached in the Lok Sabha. In 2018, Rahul Gandhi wrote a letter to Prime Minister Narendra Modi, calling for women's reservation," Priyanka Gandhi said.
Taking a swipe at Modi, she said it seems from the prime minister's address that the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) is a champion of women's reservation.
"Any woman would tell you that women easily recognise those who try to mislead them," she said and urged the BJP to be careful.
"In 2023, when this law was passed, the Congress supported it and today also, the Congress is strongly in support of women's reservation. But the truth is that the debate is not on women's reservation. The bill that the government has brought has changed the direction of the debate," Priyanka Gandhi said and hit out at the BJP over the delimitation provisions in the bill.
The Constitution (131st Amendment) Bill to tweak the women's-quota law was introduced in the Lok Sabha on Thursday after a division of votes.
Two ordinary bills -- the Delimitation Bill and the Union Territories Laws (Amendment) Bill to implement the proposed amended women's-quota law in the Union territories of Delhi, Puducherry and Jammu and Kashmir -- were also introduced in the House.
