A police officer inspects the site of a gun battle between troops and suspected Islamist militants, on the east coast of Sri Lanka, in Kalmunai.
Near Kalmunai, a town on the east coast of Sri Lanka, sixteen people, including six children, were killed overnight from Friday to Saturday in an assault by the country’s security forces on suspected members of the Islamic State group. The terrorist organization has confirmed to have been targeted.
The Islamic State group has confirmed that it was targeted by the Sri Lankan police assault on one of its caches, in which three jihadists blew themselves up and 13 others died.
The police launched a raid on a house in Kalmunai, a town on the east coast of the island on Friday evening, on the strength of information pointing to it as a cache of those responsible for the Easter attacks, which left 253 dead and 500 injured.
ISIS propaganda agency Amaq said on Saturday that the three suicide bombers were members of the organization.
Over an hour of gunfire
These men confronted the police “with automatic weapons and, after having exhausted their ammunition, detonated their explosive belts” , according to her.
At the end of this operation, which gave rise to more than an hour of firefighting, the police had counted 16 dead: in addition to these three suicide bombers, three women and six children killed by the explosions, three others men shot dead by the police, and a civilian victim of the shooting.
The Sri Lankan authorities, who had to apologize for underestimating the threat from the jihadists, have promised the utmost firmness in the repression.
Kalmunai is a city populated mostly by Muslims, in the home province of Islamist Zahran Hashim, suspected of organizing the suicide attacks.
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