Sri Lanka church bomber strokes victim's head as he leaves

Seeing that St. Sebastian’s Church was packed with people attending Easter Mass on the morning of April 21, Dilip Fernando and his wife decided to go to another church to attend Mass. As they were leaving, a bomb ripped through the church in the coastal town of Negombo, near the capital Colombo of Sri Lanka, killing dozens of people there.

It was just one of eight bombings that took place at churches and major hotels in and around the Sri Lankan capital. The death toll has now exceeded 290, with 500 injured. No group has claimed responsibility for the attacks.

“I often come here for mass,” said Fernando, 66, who returned to the church the next day and witnessed the brutality of the attack that nearly killed his family. “My wife and I came here at 7:30 a.m. but the church was packed, there was no room. I didn’t want to stand during the mass, so I left and went to another church.”

Seven members of Mr. Fernando’s family, including his in-laws and two grandchildren, decided to stay and stand outside the church of St. Sebastian. From where they stood, Mr. Fernando’s family observed a man believed to be the suicide bomber.

"At the end of the service, my children saw a young man enter the church with a heavy bag," Mr. Fernando said. "On the way out, he patted my granddaughter's head. That was the bomber."

Mr Fernando's family wondered why he entered the church when the service was about to end and described the suspect, who was in his 30s, as "looking very young and innocent". "He didn't seem excited or scared. He was very calm," a relative of Mr Fernando said.

After the bomb exploded, Fernando's seven family members ran away, then called him and his wife, thinking they were inside. "I'm really lucky because I usually come to the ceremony here. We feel relieved but also very sad for our village," Fernando said, adding that funerals for the victims would be held soon.

Still, Mr Fernando believes that Sri Lanka's Catholic community, which makes up just 6% of the population, will not be intimidated by the disaster. "If the church was open this morning, I would have gone. We are not afraid, we will not let the terrorists win, never."

Mr Fernando blamed the government for failing to prevent the attacks. "Revenge is useless," the 66-year-old said. "An attack like this could have been avoided." Sri Lanka's intelligence agency is believed to have known about the bombings 10 days in advance.

It was the deadliest bombing of civilians in the South Asian island nation since its 26-year civil war ended in 2009. The Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam, a separatist rebel group, began fighting for an independent state in the north and east of Sri Lanka on July 23, 1983. The military defeated the group in May 2009. Over nearly 26 years, the civil war has killed 80,000-100,000 people.