Sri Lanka's Government Asks Muslims To Avoid Gathering For Friday Prayers; The Strongest Cyclone In Mozambique's History Strikes The Already Devastated Country
KRISTIE LU STOUT, CNN INTERNATIONAL HOST, NEWS STREAM: I'm Kristie Lu Stout in Hong Kong and welcome to NEWS STREAM. On high alert. Sri Lanka's government asks Muslims to avoid gathering for Friday prayers. Bracing for survival. The strongest cyclone in Mozambique's history strikes the already devastated country. And a new blame game. North Korea says peace and security on the Korean peninsula will entirely depend on Washington's attitude. The government of Sri Lanka is asking Muslims to avoid gathering for Friday prayers as the Prime Minister warns that the terror threat has not passed. A government official asked Muslims to show solidarity with Catholics in the wake of Sunday's deadly attacks. A suicide bomber who attacked the Shangri La hotel on Easter Sunday has been named as Zahran Hashim. That's according to Sri Lanka's presidential media team, and that's a name that was previously known to government officials. At least 70 people have now been detained suspected of helping the suicide bombers who targeted churches and hotels. The death toll has been lowered significantly from 359 down to 253. The Health Ministry said the numbers have changed because many of the victims' bodies were severely damaged. A police source says investigators found bomb making plans as well as the components at a house they raided south of the capital. That discovery will do little to allay the concerns of people in the capital of Sri Lanka, Colombo. Almost a week after those horrific attacks, the fear in the streets is palpable. Ivan Watson is there finding empty streets and empty shops.</s>IVAN WATSON, CNN SENIOR INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Any normal day of the week, this shopping street would be full of pedestrians. But shopkeepers who are here, they say that most of the shops, more than half appear to be closed and there are a couple reasons: there are fears that the terrorist bombers could strike again, and there are fears that Muslims in this community could be targeted in revenge attacks. And today empty?</s>UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Today empty.</s>WATSON: Because of fear. People are afraid.</s>UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Afraid.</s>WATSON: Yes. How does it feel?</s>UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: It's a little bit unnerving, I guess. We're leaving the city like now, we're getting in a train.</s>WATSON: Don't be fooled by the music playing over the loudspeakers because I'd say that half the stores in this shopping mall are also closed right now, and here's part of why. The U.S. Embassy in Colombo put out this warning saying quote, "Terrorist groups continue plotting possible attacks in Sri Lanka." They could target without warning -- tourist locations, transport hubs, markets, and shopping malls. The list goes on.</s>WATSON: The Sri Lankan Security Forces are on high alert. We see them deployed all throughout the capital, Colombo; at checkpoints, checking IDs, stopping cars and searching them and that's because there is real fear that there could be a second wave of terrorist attacks and they're deployed here in front of a mosque, a Sufi Muslim mosque. Now the ideology of hate and extremism that is proposed and spread by ISIS, they hate Sufi Muslims. They consider them heretics and thus, they are also a potential target. The Catholic Church in Sri Lanka has announced that it is suspending all Church Services until April 29th amid these security threats and the Sri Lankan Minister of Muslim Affairs has urged Muslims to stay home, not to go to mosque and not to attend Friday prayers for fear of further terrorist attacks.</s>LU STOUT: That was Ivan Watson reporting and the investigation is revealing more details about the attackers. Ivan joins us now live from Colombo, and Ivan, more suspects remain at large of what is the latest on the arrests as well as the investigation.</s>WATSON: Well, at least 70 people detained by police. They are looking at a lot of relatives of some of the suspected suicide bombers. We've heard from the President's media team here that the leader of National Thowheed Jamaat, that is this homegrown Islamist extremist group that has been accused of carrying out the Easter Sunday bombings that the leader of that organization, Zahran Hashim, that he is believed to have been one of the bombers of the Shangri La Hotel, which is some distance from where I am right now in the background there.</s>WATSON: A high level Intelligence source has said that they are almost 75 percent convinced that they have identified him as one of the Shangri La Hotel bombers. I do have to say that amid the different strands of the investigation and what is clearly a substantial terrorist conspiracy when you have between eight to ten potential suicide bombers who blew themselves up on Sunday, that some of the information we've gotten from different parts of the security apparatus and the government has been contradictory at times, as have other basic statistics like the death toll, which went from 359 people killed as of Thursday, to suddenly being revised by the Health Ministry to a much lower number of casualties, 253 victims killed. The explanation being that unfortunately, many of the victims, their bodies were torn apart and that the forensics investigators were counting pieces as separate victims. But that is an example of how this process and getting the facts out has been complicated and a sign of how overwhelming it has been for the security establishment and frankly, the state here in Sri Lanka -- Kristie.</s>LU STOUT: Yes, Ivan, a downward revision in the death toll raising a lot of questions about credibility, about the scale and complexity of the investigation as well. Ivan Watson reporting live for us. Thank you. Let's bring in Hilmy Ahamed, the Vice President of the Muslim Council of Sri Lanka. Sir, thank you for joining us. You have condemned these attacks. You said that these extremists do not represent Islam. How concerned are you about a backlash, about retaliation against Muslims after these attacks?</s>HILMY AHAMED, VICE PRESIDENT OF THE MUSLIM COUNCIL OF SRI LANKA: We certainly think that, you know, there could be retaliation. But you know, the last three days have shown that no major incident has been reported, which is comforting. And we only now fear that vested interests might take advantage of this and try to create chaos in the cities.</s>LU STOUT: So Muslims have been asked to stay low, to not gather for Friday prayers. You were saying that there have been no incidents against Muslims in recent days. But how are you going to move forward here? You know, how are you talking with other Muslim leaders, other individuals in the community about responding to what happened last Sunday, and the most important thing to try to prevent that horrific extremist violence from happening again?</s>AHAMED: Yes, you know this particular assault came as a total shock for the Muslims. The Muslims never anticipated this kind of terror to be committed by anybody calling themselves Muslims. Throughout Sri Lanka's history, the Muslims have been a peace loving group. And even during the 30 years of war, none of them took up to arms, even though a whole community was expelled from their homes in the north. But to see the -- you know, we also feel very guilty, that we didn't do enough to prevent this, because we should have been a little more vigilant knowing very well, that some of them were using social media to create hate.</s>LU STOUT: Sri Lanka, as you say, is a peace loving nation, but there should be more vigilance. So, how? What should people be vigilant for? What should they be on the lookout for to identify extremism in your country?</s>AHAMED: Basically, you see, we are a small community, and we know that the radicals may be maximum of 200 across the country. So out of two million, 200 is a very negligible figure. And they should have monitored them. They should have mobilized our mosques to ensure that there was no radicalization of the youth. You know, as we know, that some of them even traveled to Syria to join with ISIS, but you know, they were brought back and rehabilitated.</s>LU STOUT: Yes, I mean, they represent a very, very, very small portion of the community and yet it involved some pretty prominent individuals. You know, two of the suicide bombers involved in these attacks are members of a prominent and wealthy family. Their father, a spice tycoon named Mohamed Ibrahim, did you know this family and do you know how they came to be radicalized?</s>AHAMED: Yes, that is a huge mystery. I personally didn't know the family, but I knew of the person because he is a fairly well- established spice merchant and people claimed that he was the third largest spice exporter from Sri Lanka. And to see with the ISIS claim, a lot of the puzzle seems to be fitting in because ISIS has always been targeting, not the poor, but you know, well- educated, middle class youth. So almost all the suicide bombers, other than Zahran fit that category of people.</s>LU STOUT: Hilmy Ahamed, we thank you for joining us. Take care.</s>AHAMED: Thank you.</s>LU STOUT: Now, in Mozambique, the strongest cyclone ever to hit the country has demolished homes and knocked out power. Cyclone Kenneth made landfall on Thursday after killing three people in the nearby island nation of Comoros. Now although the winds have died down, a Red Cross official warns that heavy rain will happen over the next few days that could bring a second wave of destruction. Chad Myers joins us live from the CNN World Weather Center, and Chad, not that long ago, we had Cyclone Idai, which caused hundreds of deaths in the region. Could this storm, Kenneth be just as devastating?</s>CHAD MYERS, CNN METEOROLOGIST: Absolutely. Except that we don't have the population density where Kenneth hit, so there's some good news there. Compared to millions of people, we think somewhere around 700,000 people are affected. But this is a much bigger storm than Idai. This was a 220 kilometers per hour storm. Here it was yesterday, about this time, coming and going to the west making landfall to the north of Pemba. Remember now, this is south of the equator. So the winds are actually going what we would consider the wrong way. If you consider a northern hemisphere hurricane, this winds go the other direction because we have a different Coriolis force here. But we know as this made landfall that there was a storm surge along the coast between five and seven meters high that's just wave after wave of higher waves pushing things down, knocking people backwards. And also as you mentioned, a lot of rainfall. Wind surge and rain and then flooding. Mudslides expected. This isn't very topographical here. The highest mountain in the area that's going to get a lot of rain is going to be somewhere around 800 meters high. Here is the rainfall that we already have seen -- 250 millimeters along the coast. But the problem is what happens next. The storm truly isn't moving very much. We're going to see the rainfall continue here. This is a big storm, Category 4 storm -- according to our, let's say a hurricane scale in the Atlantic. What happens here? Mozambique, it's one Category 1 every nine years. We've had two, Category 1 -- two, and then a four here just in the past six weeks. So yes, devastating area. Now the good news is the rainfall that came from Idai is not in the same area that the rainfall is coming here from Kenneth. So that's something, a piece of good news. And then as the storm continues to roll up onto the north, we will see the rainfall spread out just a little bit. There you see the -- that would be the center of what was Kenneth as it moves away for the next five days, but we're still going to pick up somewhere in the neighborhood of 500 millimeters more of rainfall in the area that will eventually have to run down into the ocean. Finally now, the good news is most of this area is National Park. So some of the rainfall will soak in. But no one is going to ever soak in a meter of rainfall in any one area. It is going to run off and there will be massive, massive flooding -- Kristie.</s>LU STOUT: Kenneth is a ferocious storm. There will be massive flooding. Chad we appreciate the update. Thank you. You're watching NEWS STREAM, and up next. Kim Jong-un says when it comes to the nuclear tensions on the Korean Peninsula, the ball is in the United States' court. Now, what he says might happen if the U.S. does not change its attitude. Also ahead Saudi Arabia under scrutiny. Trial documents raise new questions about this week's mass executions.