Video: Blast at Sri Lanka’s Kochikade St. Anthony's church caught on camera

A purported video footage of a bomb blast in Sri Lanka’s St. Anthony's church has emerged on social media. A dashcam footage of the blast shows smoke coming out of the St. Anthony's church in Kochikade after the blast. News Nation could not independently verify the authenticity of the footage.

As many as 165 people were killed while over 400 others, including foreign nationals, sustained serious injuries as six near-simultaneous blasts rocked three churches and three five star hotels in Sri Lanka on Easter Sunday morning. The blasts targeted St Anthony’s Church in Colombo, St Sebastian’s Church in the western coastal town of Negombo and another church in the eastern town of Batticaloa around 8.45 a.m. (local time) when worshipers were attending Easter services, police spokesman Ruwan Gunasekera said.

Three explosions were reported from the five-star hotels - the Shangri-La, the Cinnamon Grand and the Kingsbury. Foreigners and locals who were injured in hotel blasts were admitted to the Colombo General Hospital.

According to sources, 129 deaths have been confirmed in the blasts, but local media reports claimed that the death toll has already reached 160 and was likely to increase further. "Many casualties including foreigners," said Harsha de Silva, the Minister of Economic Reforms and Public Distribution.

So far, no group has claimed the responsibility for one of the deadliest attack in the history of Sri Lanka. However, most of the deadly attacks in the past in Sri Lanka were carried out by the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) which ran a military campaign for a separate Tamil homeland in the northern and eastern provinces of the island nation for nearly 30 years before its collapse in 2009 after the Sri Lankan.

Watch the video below:

A dashcam footage showing the blast which occurred this morning at Kochikade St. Anthony's church.#SriLanka #Lk pic.twitter.com/bIWctmTUup

— Kavinthan s (@Kavinthans) April 21, 2019