COLOMBO (Reuters) - Sri Lankan President Maithripala Sirisena will declare a nationwide emergency from midnight on Monday following Easter Sunday suicide bomb blasts at churches and luxury hotels that killed 290 people and wounded more than 500, his office said.

“The government has decided to gazette the clauses related to prevention of terrorism to emergency regulation and gazette it by midnight,” the president’s media unit said in a statement.

It said the measure would be confined to dealing with terrorism and would not impinge on freedom of expression.