A CCTV footage reportedly shows two of the suspected suicide bombers inside an elevator of the Shangri-La Hotel in Sri Lanka’s Colombo moments before they blew themselves up on Easter Sunday. The latest footage comes after another suspected suicide bomber was seen entering St Sebastian’s church in Negombo, where 200 people were killed in the deadliest of the six near-simultaneous attacks. Also read | Exact moment suicide bomber enters Sri Lanka’s St Sebastian’s church Nine suicide bombers, including a woman, killed nearly 360 people in coordinated attacks on three churches and four luxury hotels in the island country. National Thowheed Jamath, a local Islamist group, is suspected of being involved in planning the attacks, for which the Islamic State militant group has claimed responsibility. The suspected terrorists can be seen in the 65-second footage walking down a corridor and then inside the elevator talking to each other as they head to the third floor of the Shangri-La Hotel. The men are seen wearing similar backpacks and caps and getting out of the elevator. They are then seen walking into a third-floor restaurant, Table One, which was serving a brunch service. A number of people are also seen in the footage inside the restaurant. The CCTV footage was shared by news agency ANI and aired by a local Sri Lankan television channel. The ISIS released a video late on Tuesday through its AMAQ news agency, showing eight men, all but one with their faces covered, standing under a black Islamic State flag, declaring loyalty to its leader, Abu Bakr Al-Baghdadi. The one man in the video with his face uncovered was Mohamed Zahran Bin Hashim, a Sri Lankan preacher known for militant views. He blew himself up at Shangri La hotel in Colombo, primary investigations have revealed. News agency Reuters reported that two of the bombers were brothers, sons of a wealthy spice trader. Inshaf Ibrahim, a 33-year-old copper factory owner, detonated his explosive device at the busy breakfast buffet of the luxury Shangri-La hotel, it reported. A senior Sri Lankan official has said that most of the bombers were well-educated and came from “economically strong families” and some of them went abroad to study. Ten Indians were among those killed in the serial blasts in Sri Lanka on Sunday. The Sri Lankan government has invoked emergency powers after the devastating bomb attacks. The emergency law, which gives police and the military extensive powers to detain and interrogate suspects without court orders, came into effect at midnight on Monday.<doc-sep>Neighbors said the family largely kept to itself. They said the women of the house were rarely, if ever, seen outside, and none had had extended interactions with the sons. Several mentioned that the sons made a gesture during prayers they found unusual. The gesture is associated with Salafism, a fundamentalist brand of Islam.<doc-sep>Six bomb attacks across three cities in Sri Lanka on Easter Sunday. Most of them occurred within a single half-hour. The targets were churches and popular hotel restaurants. About 250 people were killed. Afterwards, three bombs detonate as police look for suspects. Sri Lankan officials have blamed a little-known radical Islamist group for the violence. Here’s how the Easter Sunday attacks unfolded. What they show is a level of sophistication and coordination that resulted in one of the deadliest terror attacks in modern history. The story actually begins 10 days earlier, on April 11. This document shows that Sri Lankan security forces were warned about the threats. Nothing is done to protect the churches. These are the three cities where the attacks take place on Easter Sunday. In Negombo, around 8:45 a.m., security cameras pick up this man walking into the St. Sebastian Church. He’s a suicide bomber. This attack is the deadliest of the day. Over 100 people are killed. Around the same time, three separate other attacks hit the capital nearly simultaneously. One is here at a Catholic church called St. Anthony’s Shrine. This dashcam footage gives a clue about the intensity of the blast. It blows off part of the church’s roof. At the Shangri-La Hotel’s Table One Restaurant, an Easter brunch is being served. This photo is taken moments before two suicide bombers strike that location. The third target at this time is the Kingsbury Hotel. Experts say the bombs reveal a high level of sophistication. The amount of damage suggests the attackers had expert bomb-making skills and access to military-grade high explosives. Each attack targeted confined spaces, maximizing the impact of the blasts. Within a few minutes of the first waves of bomb blasts, there are two more attacks — one at another Colombo hotel, and another at a church on the country’s opposite coast. As authorities respond, police encounter three more explosives that detonate. Three officers are killed in one of these instances. So in the first 36 hours, six bomb attacks have occurred and so have three detonations of bombs found by police. [singing] All of this proof that a very deadly day could have been even deadlier. [singing]<doc-sep>'Is everything I'm trying to do pointless? ': Syrians helpless in face of 'sham' election Residents stand near stalls along a road amidst debris while strong winds batter Balasore district in Odisha state on May 26, 2021 as Cyclone Yaas barrels towards India's eastern coast in the Bay of Bengal. (Photo by Dibyangshu SARKAR / AFP) (Photo by DIBYANGSHU SARKAR/AFP via Getty Images) France's President Emmanuel Macron (L) and Rwanda's President Paul Kagame speak as they walk in the grounds of The Presidential Palace in Kigali on May 27, 2021, after their press conference and prior to their official luncheon. - French President Emmanuel Macron arrived in Rwanda on May 27, 2021, for a highly symbolic visit aimed at moving on from three decades of diplomatic tensions over France's role in the 1994 genocide in the country. Macron is the first French leader since 2010 to visit the East African nation, which has long accused France of complicity in the killing of some 800,000 mostly Tutsi Rwandans. (Photo by Ludovic MARIN / AFP) (Photo by LUDOVIC MARIN/AFP via Getty Images) NEGOMBO, SRI LANKA - APRIL 23: Coffins are carried to a grave during a mass funeral at St Sebastian Church on April 23, 2019 in Negombo, Sri Lanka. At least 311 people were killed with hundreds more injured after coordinated attacks on churches and hotels on Easter Sunday rocked three churches and three luxury hotels in and around Colombo as well as at Batticaloa in Sri Lanka. Sri Lankan authorities declared a state of emergency on Monday as police arrested 24 people so far in connection with the suicide bombs, which injured at least 500 people as the blasts took place at churches in Colombo city as well as neighboring towns and hotels, including the Shangri-La, Kingsbury and Cinnamon Grand. (Photo by Carl Court/Getty Images) (CNN) — Two of the suicide bombers involved in the Easter Sunday attacks in Sri Lanka were members of a prominent and wealthy family in Colombo, sources have told CNN, in a development that has rocked the small Muslim community in the city. The brothers, Imsath Ahmed Ibrahim and Ilham Ahmed Ibrahim, were among the band of extremists who blew themselves up in Sunday’s attacks, two sources with knowledge of the investigation said. Their father, Mohamed Ibrahim, is the founder of Colombo-based Ishana Exports, which describes itself on its website as the “largest exporter of spices from Sri Lanka since 2006.” Mohamed Ibrahim was among dozens of people detained in the wake of the attacks, the sources told CNN. Video footage shows Ibrahim being led away by police. Authorities have not announced any charges against him. The brothers are reported to be in their early 30s. Their identities were first disclosed by Indian news outlet Firstpost, citing intelligence sources in India. CNN has not been able to reach Mohamed Ibrahim or other members of his family for comment. Four days after the coordinated attacks, the Sri Lankan Health Ministry revised the death toll, saying 253 people had died. That toll is significantly lower than the 359 initially reported to CNN by a Colombo police spokesman this week. The health ministry cited the condition of remains and the difficulty in identifying them for the discrepancy. Sri Lanka’s State Defense Minister Ruwan Wijewardene told reporters at a press conference earlier on Wednesday that those responsible for the attacks on Easter Sunday were well educated, from upper-middle class families, and financially independent. That was a “worrying factor,” he said. Eranga Jayawardena/AP A Sri Lankan police officer patrols out side a mosque in Colombo, Sri Lanka. According to neighbors and members of Colombo’s Muslim community, the Ibrahims are one of the wealthiest Muslim families in the capital, with connections to the country’s business and political elite. Pamuditha Anjana, a neighbor in the Dematagoda district of Colombo, told CNN the Ibrahim family was “very well connected, very rich, politically connected as well.” Will Ripley/CNN Reyyaz Salley Reyyaz Salley, chairman of Colombo’s Dewatagaha Mosque, one of the largest and oldest in the city, said the elder Ibrahim was “a really nice person, a business-minded person who did export of spices.” “We knew him as a normal person and as a businessperson,” he said. The family spice company appears to be linked to a copper factory that was investigated in association with Sunday’s attacks. On its website, Colossus Copper states that Ishana Spice is its parent company. A phone number provided by both companies on their websites was identical. Calls to that number were not answered Wednesday. Nine workers at the copper factory appeared in court earlier this week after being arrested on suspicion of providing materials used in Sunday’s bombs, according to court papers seen by a source at Colombo Magistrates’ Court. They are due back in court on May 6. Hilmy Ahamed, vice president of the Muslim Council of Sri Lanka, was aware of Mohamed Ibrahim as a prominent member of the community. He described him as “very rich” and added that his sons were “well educated overseas.” Ahamed doubted Mohamed Ibrahim had any idea of what his sons were planning. “He was a busy businessman,” he said. “He probably totally neglected what was happening around him. I doubt that he had knowledge.” Other bombers named British security sources in the UK identified another bomber as Abdul Lathief Jameel Mohamed, saying that he studied in the southeast of England from 2006 to 2007. Wijewardene, the state defense minister, said investigators believe one of the bombers had studied in the UK and was a postgraduate student in Australia before returning to Sri Lanka. Shiral Lakthilaka, an adviser to Sri Lanka’s President, identified one of the men who blew himself up at the Shangri-La hotel as Inshan Seelavan, and described him as the “mastermind” of the attacks. Other officials have named a radical extremist, Zahran Hashim, as another key figure in the attacks. His whereabouts are unknown. ISIS Zahran Hashim is seen, unmasked, in the center of a still from a video released by ISIS after the attacks.<doc-sep>
The suicide bombers who killed at least 359 people in Sri Lanka’s Easter Sunday terror attacks were largely well off and included one who studied law in Australia, officials said Wednesday. “Some of the suspected bombers, most of them are well-educated and come from maybe middle or upper-middle class, so are financially independent and their families are quite stable,” Sri Lankan Junior Defense Minister Ruwan Wijewardene told reporters of the eight men and one woman who government officials believe to be behind the carnage. Perhaps none fits that bill more than brothers Inshaf and Ilham Ahmed Ibrahim, sons of prominent Sri Lankan spice exporter Mohamed Ibrahim, according to Indian outlet Firstpost, which citing intelligence sources identified the siblings as two of the attackers. Carrying virtually identical backpacks stuffed with explosives, Inshaf, 33, and Ilham, 31, entered two hotels in the coastal capital of Colombo on Easter Sunday morning. Standing at the hotels’ bustling breakfast buffets, the brothers detonated their deadly loads within minutes of each other, two of six near-simultaneous blasts that killed at least 359 people and wounded at least another 500 in the island nation’s hotels and churches. In the chaotic hours after the first and largest wave of explosions, Sri Lankan cops traced the brothers back to a family home using an address one used at hotel check-in, and stormed inside. That’s when the wife of one of the brothers triggered a blast of her own, killing herself, her two kids and three police officers, Agence France-Presse previously reported. Now dad Mohamed Ibrahim and a third son, Ijas, are among at least 60 people being interrogated by cops in Colombo, Firstpost reported. The founder of Colombo-based Ishana Exports and his brood are “very well connected, very rich, politically connected as well,” neighbor Pamuditha Anjana told CNN. But Hilmy Ahamed, vice president of the Muslim Council of Sri Lanka, said that he believed the spice tycoon — a prominent member in Colombo’s small but tight-knit Muslim community — was too focused on his business empire to notice his sons’ apparent radicalization. “He was a busy businessman,” Ahamed told CNN. “He probably totally neglected what was happening around him. “I doubt he had knowledge.” Ahamed added that Ibrahim’s sons were “well-educated overseas,” a trait they shared with another bomber identified Wednesday. “One of them we know went to the UK, then went to Australia for a law degree,” said Wijewardene of one suspect, identified by sources to Sky News as Abdul Lathief Jameel Mohamed. Mohamed studied in southeast England between 2006 and 2007, before taking postgraduate classes in Australia and eventually resettling in Sri Lanka, the news outlet reported. Also identified Wednesday was factory owner Inshan Seelavan, described by Sri Lankan presidential adviser Shiral Lakthilaka as not only a bomber but the attack “mastermind” — a moniker at odds with earlier government claims that Zahran Hashim was the ringleader. Seelavan detonated his explosives at Colombo’s Shangri-La Hotel, and is confirmed dead. Hashim, the fiery, West-hating cleric at the helm of local terror cell National Towheed Jama’ar, is also thought to have been a bomber, though his death has not been officially confirmed. Sri Lankan authorities initially pinned the blame for the bloodshed on Hashim’s group and another local group, Jammiyathul Millathu Ibrahim, but ISIS on Tuesday stepped forward to claim responsibility. US Ambassador to Sri Lanka Alaina Teplitz said Wednesday that claims of outside help for the two homegrown groups appear more valid the deeper that local and international investigators dissected the bombings. “If you look at the scale of the attacks, the level of coordination, the sophistication of them, it’s not implausible to think there are foreign linkages,” Teplitz told reporters. “Exploring potential linkages is going to be part” of the investigation. Meanwhile on Wednesday, Sri Lankan officials promised a swift overhaul among the country’s security leadership, amid troubling admissions that intelligence operatives had enough information to prevent the bombings as early as April 4, but failed to act. Sri Lankan President Maithripala Sirisena requested the resignations of his national police chief and defense secretary. “I will completely restructure the police and security forces in the coming weeks,” the president said in a nationally televised address. Parliamentary leader Lakshman Kiriella, meanwhile, accused some senior officials of deliberately keeping potentially lifesaving intelligence to themselves amid fierce government infighting. “Some top intelligence officials hid the intelligence information purposefully,” he told parliament. “The top-brass security officials did not take appropriate actions.” Wijiwardene agreed.