Although Sri Lanka has admitted that it received warnings between April 4 and the day of the attack, it has not explained why more was not done to act on them. In addition, Sri Lanka appeared to claim that the attack was motivated by “retaliation” for the Christchurch terror attack against Muslims, yet no evidence for that was presented. Instead, the ISIS claim included an image of eight men assumed to be the perpetrators and also a claim it had struck at “members of the crusader alliance and Christians,” which appears to reference the US-led coalition that has been fighting ISIS. In total, 38 foreigners were murdered in the attacks.Overall, the connection between the National Thawheed Jamaat, which has been blamed for attacks on Buddhist sites in the past, and the ISIS claim, is unclear. Is there a local ISIS-affiliate, or did ISIS inspire the attack? To what degree was foreign know-how involved, such as constructing the bombs and planning the simultaneous attacks of three churches and three hotels in the same morning? The size and complexity appear to outpace the capabilities of a local group that had never done this before. It is not clear why a woman was involved in the attacks, but it is not the first time women have carried out such attacks. Women were involved in the ISIS-inspired attack in San Bernardino, and in Nigeria, Iraq and Syria, there were reports of women becoming suicide bombers. Some of them were coerced or forced.Foreign intelligence agencies may have known about the threats. But there wasn’t enough chatter to alert the US. US officials say they had no prior knowledge, Reuters reports. While Sri Lanka says the attackers had foreign links, the intelligence about them may have primarily come from India and an ISIS suspect detained there. Sri Lanka will now have to examine how its security services operated in the lead-up to the attacks. Much like 9/11, there will be questions about information sharing.Also, though obviously slightly less relevantly, why are the ringleaders always left-handed (see Jihadi John)? #SriLankaAttacks pic.twitter.com/1RoT12uJvA
— Josie Ensor (@Josiensor) April 23, 2019
The death toll of the attack is now so high that it is considered one of the worst attacks in history. After 9/11, the worst attacks include the Karrada bombing in Baghdad in 2016 which killed 341, the attack on a Sufi mosque in Sinai which killed 311 in 2017, the Paris attack that murdered 130 in 2015, the October 2017 attack in Mogadishu that killed 587, the Kano bombing in 2014 that killed 120, the Garissa University massacre of 2015 that killed 148, the Peshawar school massacre in 2014 that killed 149, the 2009 Mumbai attacks that killed 166, the 796 Yazidis murdered in 2007 bombings, the 2004 Ashura attacks in Iraq that killed 178 and the Beslan school siege in 2004 that left 334 dead.Advance warning of the Sri Lanka attacks came from an ISIS suspect arrested in India who named one of the bombers https://t.co/x7o7mNlTDP pic.twitter.com/m2JOXfLeuj
— CNN (@CNN) April 24, 2019