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These are the Sri Lanka Easter ‘bombers,’ ISIS claims





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ISIS released a video Tuesday purporting to show the team of suicide bombers who killed at least 321 people on Easter in Sri Lanka.

The video surfaced hours after the on-the-ropes terror group claimed a role in the attacks.

The roughly minute-long clip, issued through ISIS’ Amaq propaganda arm, shows eight men huddled before an ISIS flag, their hands clasped together between them.

All of the men are masked except one, who leads what’s reported to be a call-and-response pledge of loyalty to the infamous terror group.

That man, who appears to be clutching an assault rifle, was identified by Sri Lankan officials to CNN as Zahran Hashim, the firebrand leader of the country’s National Thowfeek Jamaath terror cell and purported architect of the attacks.





“Zahran is the mastermind of these attacks,” Azath Salley, governor of the country’s Western Province, told the network. “He is the one.

“He is the guy who is giving them the ideology, and when he talks to people, they get convinced.”

Hashim — on authorities’ radar for at least three years thanks to his sick online calls to violence against non-Muslims, some of which used a photo of the burning Twin Towers as a backdrop — is believed, though not confirmed, to be dead after personally taking part in the attacks, said Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe.

Meanwhile, it was reported that a terrorist-behind-the-terrorist gave a warning that the attack was coming while being interrogated, only for the tip to fall largely on deaf ears.

A suspected ISIS member arrested in India in the weeks before the attack cracked under grilling by Indian officials, telling them that he radicalized and trained Hashim, who was plotting an attack on Sri Lanka, CNN reported, citing an unnamed Indian official.

Indian officials shared the intel — down to Hashim’s name — with their counterparts in Sri Lanka as early as April 4, but the information was slow to trickle through the Sri Lankan government, and it’s unclear what precautions, if any, were taken.





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