Easter bombs had explosives not used before by LTTE or military, source

The explosives used by the suicide bombers for the Easter Sunday attacks had been improvised by the terrorists which neither the military nor the LTTE had used before, sources said.

They said that the explosives were believed to have been created with a combination of several chemicals.

It was also revealed that bombers had used bulb filament to detonate the bombs. It was hard to believe that bombers had used military grade explosives because investigators could not find such explosives from the back pack used by the bombers. Explosives, such as TNT or RDX, were not found from those explosives.

According to the source, the Islamic State (IS) had used such explosives in many parts of the world.   The source said that a strong explosion could be achieved if right amount of various chemicals were combined.

The investigators suspect that such technique could have been obtained from an overseas country.

Following the Easter Sunday attacks on April 21, the police raided a house in Panadura suspected to have been used by the suicide bombers. The source said that there was evidence to believe that chemicals were mixed at the Panadura house to create explosives.

The police recovered three burned cans suspected to have been filled with chemicals from the house. They also recovered diagrams and several devises including incandescent bulbs and the house had been cleaned by the bombers to erase their traces.

The source said that they were able to recover a bulb filament from the body of one of the bombers of the Shangri-La hotel. The filament recovered from the suicide bomber’s body was similar to those bulbs found from the Panadura house.

The source said the devices and items recovered from the suicide attacks were handed over to a lab to determine the inclusive of the explosives. (Darshana Sanjeewa Balasuriya)