The true toll of Sunday’s attacks in Sri Lanka was starting to come into focus on Monday, as family members, government officials and news reports offered the first glimpse of the people who lost their lives.
Officials have confirmed citizens from at least eight countries, including the United States, were killed in the attacks, NYT reported.
Information about Sri Lankan victims was initially sparse, but the names of some foreign victims began to appear in the international news media, a few of which The Times was able to confirm. We will update this article as we learn more about the people who died.
Shangri-La Hotel victims
As of Monday morning, the names of two victims of the bombings at the Shangri-La Hotel in Colombo, the capital, had been made public.
One of them, K. G. Hanumantharayappa, was a businessman from the southern Indian city of Bangalore who had only been in Sri Lanka for a few days, his nephew, Rajath, said by telephone. Mr. Hanumantharayappa was among five Indian victims of the attacks who had been identified as of Monday afternoon by Indian officials.
Another victim, Kaori Takahashi, was a Japanese woman who had been eating breakfast at the Shangri-La Hotel with her husband and a 4 year old who was believed to be her child, according to NHK, Japan’s national broadcaster. Her husband and the child survived the attack.
Ms. Takahashi had been in charge of public relations for the women’s chapter of a volunteer support group for Japanese expatriates and their families in Sri Lanka, according to the group’s website. The Asahi Shimbun newspaper reported that she was in her 30s.
Three children of a Danish billionaire
Three of the Danish billionaire Anders Holch Povlsen’s four children were among the victims killed in the Colombo attacks, the Danish news media reported.
Mr. Povlsen, 46, is the largest shareholder in a British online clothing store, Asos.com, and the largest landowner in Scotland. He and his wife, Anne, have spoken of “rewilding” thousands of acres across Scotland, and said last week that they would pass the project on to their children in the future.
Two Turkish engineers
Two of the victims were Turkish engineers who had been working on a project in Sri Lanka, the English-language Daily Sabah newspaper reported, citing the state-owned Anadolu Agency. The report did not say where they had been killed.
Turkey’s foreign minister, Mevlut Cavusoglu, confirmed the victims’ names as Serhan Selcuk Narici and Yigit Ali Cavus. A Facebook page that appeared to be Mr. Narici’s said he had moved to Colombo in March 2017.
A Bangladeshi politician’s young relative
Zayan Chowdhury, an 8-year-old relative of a prominent Bangladeshi politician, was among those killed in one of the hotel blasts, the Bangladeshi news media reported. The Dhaka Tribune newspaper said that he had been in Colombo on vacation with his family.
Zayan was the grandson of Sheikh Fazlul Karim Selim, who is the leader of Bangladesh’s governing Awami League political party and a cousin of the country’s prime minister, Sheikh Hasina.
When the blast hit, Zayan was having breakfast on the ground floor of a hotel with his father, Mashiul Haque Chowdhury, the online newspaper bdnews24.com reported. The boy’s mother and younger brother were in their hotel room.
The Dhaka Tribune reported that Zayan’s father was injured in the blast and admitted to a hospital.