People caught up in Sri Lanka’s deadly Easter Sunday attacks have been telling the BBC what they experienced.
Churches and hotels were hit by a series of explosions in Colombo and Negombo on the west coast, and Batticaloa on the east.
The blasts came as members of Sri Lanka’s peaceful Christian minority prepared to attend church services for Easter Sunday.
Dr Emmanuel is a 48-year-old physician. He grew up in Sri Lanka, and now lives in Surrey, UK, with his wife and children.
They were in Colombo this week to visit some of their relatives who still live in the city. They were asleep in their room in Colombo’s Cinnamon Grand Hotel when one of the bombs went off.
“We were in our bedroom and we heard this huge explosion which rocked our room, I think it was about 8:30,” he said. “We were then ushered to the lounge in our hotel, where we were asked to evacuate through the back. This is where we saw casualties being taken away to the hospital, and we saw some of the damage to the hotel.”
A staff member commented that she had seen a dismembered body at the site of the explosion, while his friends sent him photos of the churches that had been bombed. The hotel itself, meanwhile, had “significant damage” – one of the restaurants had been blown up.
“We were going to go to church today, with my mum and nephew, but all the church services have been cancelled – there aren’t going to be any more church services in the country because of what’s happened this morning,” he said.
“I spent my first 18 years in Sri Lanka, so I’ve seen a lot of ethnic strife.” Sri Lanka was ravaged by decades of conflict between the Sinhalese and Tamil ethnic groups, but has been relatively peaceful since 2009. “Whereas my kids, my children are 11 and seven, and they’ve never seen anything like war, and neither has my wife. For them it’s quite difficult.”
He added: “It’s really sad – I thought Sri Lanka had left all this violence behind us, but now it’s sad to see that it’s come back again.”
