Sadness and fear prevailed as Pakistan is mourning the loss of precious human lives in Gulshan-e-Iqbal suicide attack on Sunday in Lahore.
A Dubai-based Indian couple had a narrow escape in the Sri Lanka blasts.
US Secretary of State Antony Blinken, in the 2020 Country Reports on Terrorism issued on Thursday, said that regionally, terrorist groups continued to operate from Pakistan.
'The ban is to ensure national security... No one should obscure their faces to make identification difficult,' Sirisena's office said in a statement.
Security has been beefed up in Sri Lanka as the army increased its deployment by 1,300 to 6,300.
A tribunal of the Delhi high court has confirmed the extension of a five-year ban imposed on Islamic Research Foundation, set up by fugitive Zakir Naik who is accused of inspiring Muslim youths in India and abroad to commit terror acts.
The attorney general instructed the authorities to charge them for their failure to prevent the Easter terror attacks.
Several people succumbed to their injuries sustained in the blasts, taking the death toll to 359.
President Maithripala Sirisena has issued a gazette notice banning three Islamic extremist organisations, including National Thowheeth Jama'ath that was blamed for the Easter bombings.
The security forces continue their hunt for members of the local terror group National Thowheeth Jamath which was behind the deadly Easter Sunday bombings in which 253 people were killed and over 500 injured.
At least 69 people including women and children were on Sunday killed and over 300 others injured in a powerful suicide blast in Pakistan's eastern city of Lahore.
The Pakistan under-19 side, captained by Rohail Nazir, was scheduled to arrive in Sri Lanka on April 30 to play two four-day matches, followed by three one-dayers.
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National flags were lowered and people bowed their heads as the silence began at 8:30 am local time, the time the first of the attacks occurred on Sunday.
The spokesman even taunted Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif on Twitter. "After the Lahore attack, Nawaz Sharif repeated old words to give himself false assurances," he wrote.
Those requiring to undertake emergency travels can contact the High Commission of India in Colombo.
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'We believe that one of the suicide bombers studied in the UK and maybe later on did his post-graduate in Australia, before coming back to settle in Sri Lanka'
After carrying out searches at seven locations in the city on Wednesday, the NIA had detained six people for questioning and arrested prime accused Mohammed Azarudeen, who was a Facebook friend of Sri Lankan Easter Day blasts mastermind Zahra Hashim.
Pakistan Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif on Monday cancelled his upcoming visit to the United States where he was scheduled to attend the Nuclear Security Summit.
Thirteen people were killed and over 70 others injured in the suicide blast which had targeted police officials.
The blockade of Facebook and WhatsApp has been imposed from mid-night following violent incidents between the minority Muslim and majority Sinhalese communities, officials said.
He also reiterated India's strong support in the fight against terrorism with Sri Lanka, which saw the country's worst terror attack on Easter Sunday.
Senior police officers were among 13 people killed on Monday when a Taliban suicide bomber blew himself up targeting them during a protest rally outside Pakistan's Punjab assembly in Lahore that also wounded 60 others.
New Delhi is approaching Gota with an open mind, observes N Sathiya Moorthy.
India and Indians can ignore Pakistan, but that cannot be said of other nations in the neighbourhood, where New Delhi's 'Neighbourhood First' policy constantly reverberates. Four of the eight SAARC member-nations are Muslim -- Afghanistan and Pakistan, Bangladesh and the Maldives. The rulers decide the nation's India or anti-India policy in the first two, and street-opinion contributes to the same in the latter two, points out N Sathiya Moorthy.
The Egyptian government has ordered military special forces to assist the police in securing vital state facilities across the country.
Director General Inter-Services Public Relations Asim Bajwa told Pakistani daily Dawn that "all four suicide bombers were killed" and a clearance operation is underway.
The protests brought home the fact that the Sri Lankan public is in no mood for halfway measures, as voices against Rajapaksa 'family rule' and 'securitisation' of the civilian administration began sidestepping the more critical economic crisis, affecting the nation and afflicting the individual, observes Sri Lanka watcher N Sathiya Moorthy.
The input was sent through diplomatic channels to the island nation after a through investigation pertaining to the IS case in Coimbatore was carried out by the NIA.
Gota has to decide if he could order elder brother Mahinda's arrest as the agent provocateur of Monday's violence. Then he has to prepare for an interim government, in which no one would now want to become a cabinet minister leave alone prime minister, explains N Sathiya Moorthy.
The polling body said that Prime Minister Narendra Modi did not violate the model code or its advisory on armed forces in his speech in Varanasi. It also found nothing wrong in his comments made in Nanded, Maharashtra where he reportedly dubbed the Congress as a 'sinking Titanic'.
The reports suggested six members of the terror outfit infiltrated into the state by sea from Sri Lanka and moved to different cities, including Coimbatore, according to the police.
Colombo seems to be veering to the middle path between China and the US on global matters, but in regional matters of strategic security, it is increasingly identifying with India, points out N Sathiya Moorthy.
'Should the new ISIS leadership opt for a consolidation, the Afghan-Pakistan border would be an attractive place,' warns Brigadier S K Chatterji (retd).
'Pakistan needs to be constantly at war with somebody, ultimately resulting in it waging war on itself and its own people,' says Shekhar Gupta.
Pakistan on Monday launched a massive military operation in Punjab province in the wake of the deadly Taliban suicide bombing in Lahore, conducting raids and making several arrests.
Two powerful blasts triggered by Islamic State in two churches packed with worshippers celebrating Palm Sunday in Egypt's Tanta and Alexandria cities.
From Sri Lanka's most popular political family to its most despised -- going by the voices on the streets calling for the Rajapaksas' ouster -- what went wrong for the clan? Veteran Sri Lanka watcher N Sathiya Moorthy offers an insight.
Driven from its self-styled caliphate in Iraq and Syria, Islamic State is down but not out. Where once they confronted armies, the extremist Islamist group's adherents have now staged hit-and-run raids and suicide attacks. In some cases, the group has claimed responsibility for atrocities, including the bombings of churches and hotels in Sri Lanka that killed at least 253 people. Its involvement is not always proven, but even if the link is ideological rather than operational, Islamic State still poses a security threat in many countries.
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