Moment Sri Lanka suicide bomber entered church with huge backpack metro.co.uk

Police have arrested 40 suspects in the Sri Lanka attacks, including the driver of a van allegedly used by suicide bombers and the owner of a house where some of them lived, officials said. Sri Lanka’s president gave the military a wider berth to detain and arrest suspects on Tuesday – powers that were used during the 26-year civil war but withdrawn when it ended in 2009. The death toll from Sunday’s attacks rose to 310, police spokesman Ruwan Gunasekara said. On Tuesday, which president Maithripala Sirisena declared a day of mourning, Sri Lankan authorities planned to brief foreign diplomats and receive assistance from the FBI and other foreign intelligence-gathering agencies after officials disclosed yesterday that warnings had been received weeks ago of the possibility of an attack by the radical Muslim group blamed for the bloodshed.