Sri Lanka investigates Easter bombings

At least one Sri Lankan hotel has banned facial coverings in the aftermath of the attacks.

A British guest at Ella Flower Garden Resort in the small mountain town of Ella, about 200 kilometers (about 125 miles) east of Colombo, told CNN that the rule began on Tuesday, and described it as "a hijab and burqa ban."

Signs on the hotel's glass door depict a variety of banned facial coverings, including icons of a helmet, an eye mask, a balaclava, an eyeless full-figure shroud, and an apparent Islamic burqa.

Kosala Dissanayake, the hotel's director of sales, confirmed the rule, and emphasized to CNN that the ban extended to all face coverings.

"We mention on signs in here about full-face helmet and fully-covered jackets," he said. "Because of the current situation going on Sri Lanka, we have to take some tough decisions," he added.

The hotel's ban follows allegations that Muslim extremists were responsible for the coordinated attacks, which killed at least 359 people in churches and luxury hotels.

The Sri Lankan government has warned that attackers could still be at large, and several countries have issued travel warnings for the country.

Facebook and WhatsApp are still blocked in Sri Lanka, days after the Easter Sunday terrorist attacks. 

Many Sri Lankans are turning to VPNs to get around the ban, with a massive uptick in searches for VPNs and information on how to get around the blocks, according to Simon Migliano, head of research at Top10VPN.com. 

Experts and locals have criticized the ban as counterproductive and illiberal, and questioned the government's justification for the ban as preventing the spread of "false information."

"As facts are developing it's becoming clearer that the government of Sri Lanka has a lot to explain owing to its failure in keeping its citizens secure," said Mishi Choudhary, legal director at the Software Freedom Law Center.

"Shutting down social media at such a time when people whose loved ones have died are seeking answers seems selfish and politically motivated," she added.

Former FBI Senior Intelligence Adviser and CNN contributor Phil Mudd warned on Tuesday that focusing on local group National Tawheed Jamath (NTJ), which has been accused of carrying out the blasts, could leave the country open to another attack.

NTJ has not claimed the attacks. Meanwhile, ISIS did claim responsibility for the bombings last night, but its involvement has not been proven.

"If you have an ISIS claim of responsibility, given ISIS and what they’ve done, in places like Europe, the Middle East and elsewhere, you gotta sit back and take it seriously," he said.

Mudd later added:

Sri Lankan Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe told reporters on Tuesday that there were "still people on the run with explosives."

Watch the whole exchange here.

Matt Linsey lost two of his children in the Shangri-La hotel bombing. The London-based investment banker fled the hotel restaurant as the first bomb exploded, shepherding his children Daniel, 19, and Amelie, 15, out of the room.

But a second explosion detonated near the elevators on the third floor of the upmarket hotel, and killed them both.

His face peppered with minute scars from shrapnel and debris, Linsey is tormented by what he could have done differently.

"Maybe I should have stayed and covered them with my body," he told CNN.

Read his story here.

New Zealand and France are convening world leaders and tech giants to end the use of social media platforms for organizing and promoting terror acts. The meeting, co-chaired by New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern and French President Emmanuel Macron, will take place in Paris on May 15, the New Zealand government has announced.

The meeting was prompted by the March terror attack on mosques in the New Zealand city of Christchurch, and aims to get tech giants pledge to "eliminate terrorist and violent extremist content online," a statement says.

Social networks were also blocked in Sri Lanka after Sunday's attacks, with the government citing "false reports." Facebook and Whatsapp continued to be unavailable on Wednesday, say CNN staffers on the ground.

Ardern has urged tech companies to get on board with the initiative:

Sri Lankan police tell CNN the death toll has jumped to 359, up from a previous count of 321 people.

Early warnings from India's intelligence services to Sri Lankan officials ahead of the Easter Sunday bombings were based on information gleaned from an ISIS suspect, CNN has learned.

Delhi passed on unusually specific intelligence in the weeks and days leading up to the attacks, Sri Lankan officials have said, and at least some of it was gleaned from material obtained during interrogations of an ISIS suspect arrested in India, an Indian official told CNN.

The suspect gave investigators the name of a man he trained in Sri Lanka, who is associated with a local extremist group implicated in the bombings, the source said. The man, Zahran Hashim, was identified in a video of the purported attackers released Tuesday by ISIS, which claimed responsibility for the Easter Sunday killings.

In a statement published by the ISIS-affiliated news agency Amaq, the group said the attackers were "fighters of the Islamic State."

The involvement of a foreign organization would explain how a previously marginal domestic extremist group blamed for the attacks, National Tawheed Jamath (NTJ), could have pulled off one of the worst terrorist atrocities since 9/11.

Read more here

Changes in top positions in Sri Lanka’s security divisions will be made within 24 hours, President Maithripala Sirisena said Tuesday in a video message to the nation. 

“I expect to conduct a complete restructuring of security divisions,” including the army and police, in the coming week, he said.

“Mainly within the next 24 hours I expect to make changes in top positions of security divisions,” Sirisena added.