Anti-terror operations in Sri Lanka kill 16 | Chronic

An operation of the Sri Lankan security forces against an Islamic State (IS) cell in the eastern city of Kalmunai, as part of investigations into the series of attacks perpetrated last Sunday killed at least 16 people, including six minors, police reported.

The events were triggered when the army and police tried to enter a radical militia shelter, after which three men exploded, killing three women and six children.

These victims are added "three other men"Found lifeless outside the house, also suspected to be suicide bombers, according to the police version, quoted by the German press service Deutsche Welle.

The operation had started last night, after receiving an anonymous notice on the existence of a house where hiding people related to suicide bombings on Easter Sunday in the Asian island country.

In a statement, the authorities badured that the security forces "they attacked a house where a huge deposit of explosives was found"A child was injured during the confrontation and was referred to a health center.

According to the statement, the suspects may have been members of the nationalist Islamist group Towheed Jama & at (NTJ), accused by the government of perpetrating Sunday attacks and alleged links with ISIS. . Up to now, there are 76 detainees because of their alleged relationship to the Easter Sunday attacks, during which 253 people lost their lives. In the past 24 hours, 20 people, including Syrian and Egyptian citizens, have been arrested, while the police are looking for about 140 people who could be directly linked to employment insurance.

"We now have information that there are about 140 people in Sri Lanka related to the Islamic State; we can and we will eradicate them all very quickly"said the country's president, Maithripala Sirisena.

The authorities believe that the leader of the group who perpetrated the attacks on churches and hotels, Zahran Hashim, wanted for five days, died in the attacks. The series of attacks that took place on Sunday almost simultaneously was perpetrated by at least nine kamikazes loaded with powerful explosives.

A few hours later, a seventh detonation took place in a small hotel located about ten kilometers south of the capital and the last one in a residential complex, also in Colombo.

Attacks of this magnitude have not occurred in Sri Lanka since the Tamil guerrilla civil war against the government, a conflict that lasted 26 years and ended in 2009, and in which, according to the UN data, they lost the lives of 40,000 civilians.