COLOMBO: Sri Lanka’s military launched a major hunt on Saturday for remnants of an Islamist group which carried out the Easter suicide bombings that killed 258 people, officials said.

Several Colombo suburbs were targeted by troops using emergency powers on arrests and detentions adopted after the April 21 attacks.

“Special cordon-and-search operations are under way in three areas just outside Colombo,” a military official told reporters.

Similar operations were also carried out in North Western Province, near Colombo, where anti-Muslim riots this month left one man dead and hundreds of Muslim-owned shops, homes and mosques destroyed.

Security forces have arrested scores of suspects in connection with the bombings of three hotels and three churches and over what appeared to be organised violence against the island’s Muslim minority.

Meanwhile, the independent Human Rights Commission of Sri Lanka accused police of failing to prevent the anti-Muslim riots after the bombings.

“There appeared to be no preventive measures taken although retaliatory violence against the Muslim communities was a distinct possibility after the terror attacks of April 21,” the HRCSL said in a letter to acting police chief Chandana Wickramaratne.

Published in Dawn, May 26th, 2019