The Easter Sunday suicide bombings in Sri Lanka were intended as retaliation for last month's attack against Muslims in Christchurch, according to initial investigations by the Sri Lankan government.
"We believe [the massacre] was carried out by an extreme Islamist group as a reprisal to the Christchurch mosque massacre in New Zealand," Sri Lanka's state minister for defence Ruwan Wijewardene said in a statement to parliament.
"This group is known to have links to an organisation named National Thowheed Jamath. We should take immediate steps to ban any such organisation that have links to extremist elements," he added.
At least 321 people were killed in eight separate attacks on Sunday.
