Anti-Racism
Over 200 people including several Americans were killed in several coordinated bomb attacks on churches on hotels in Sri Lanka on Easter.
Several Christian communities spread across the island nation were targeted in the attack: Suicide bombers detonated one set of bombs at churches in the cities of Colombo and Negombo on the western coast, home to many Sinhalese-speaking Catholics. Another was detonated in a Protestant church 200 miles away—in Batticaloa, a city in the Tamil majority eastern side of the island.
As a Catholic religious studies researcher and professor, I lived in Sri Lanka in the fall of 2013 and did research on Catholicism in both the southwest and northern parts of the country. Approximately, 7% of Sri Lanka’s 21 million are Christian. The majority of them are Roman Catholic.
MOSCOW, Russia — Jewish officials said Friday an arson fire was set at the largest yeshiva in Russia just ahead of the Passover meal celebration. Swastikas were also sprayed on the seminary.
No one was reported injured in the early Friday fire at the Torat Chaim school in an eastern Moscow suburb.
Olga Esaulova, a spokeswoman for Moscow’s chief rabbi, was quoted by the Interfax news agency as saying the fire was set in a storage area for kosher meat and that swastikas were drawn at the yeshiva’s entrance.
There were about 60 students, rabbis and guests in the building at the time, the state news agency RIA-Novosti reported.