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THE RUNDOWN | The death toll of the Sri Lanka Easter massacre has left 359 dead and 500 wounded. It is becoming clear that security officials in the country could have done a lot more to prevent them. Sri Lanka has already asked the defense minister and chief of police to resign. Our Jonathan Regev has the story. 

Story: 

The death toll of Easter Sunday attacks in Sri Lanka rose to 359 on Wednesday, while national and international actors intensified their efforts to uncover the network responsible for the massacre.

Sri Lankan authorities said they had arrested 18 more people overnight, bringing the total number of people in police custody to 58, although in a press conference later, the state defense minister, Ruwan Wijewardene said it was 60.

As of Wednesday, Sri Lankan police had confirmed nine suicide bombers had carried out the attacks, and eight had been identified. One of them was alleged to be a woman.

A fourth attack against a hotel on Sunday was foiled, after security forces followed a would-be attacker to a Colombo house where he blew himself up, killing three police commandos.

Security forces remained on high alert, as the country entered a state of emergency, with army sappers conducting several controlled explosions in capital Colombo, sending shockwaves through social media.

Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe said Tuesday that police were hunting for more armed suspects and that further attacks were possible. "We are trying to apprehend them," he said.

There were 39 foreigners among the dead, with the attacks targeting luxury hotels as well as churches.

PM Wickremesinghe said security services believed there were "foreign links and some of the evidence points to that."

“If you look at the scale of the attacks, the level of coordination, the sophistication of them, it’s not implausible to think there are foreign linkages,” the U.S. ambassador to Sri Lanka, Alaina Teplitz, also told reporters in Colombo.

Sri Lankan police sources told AFP that two Muslim brothers, sons of a wealthy Colombo spice trader, blew themselves up at the Shangri-La and the Cinnamon Grand hotels.

Most of the attackers were well-educated, and some had apparently studied in the UK and Australia, pointing to the global character of the operation.

CNN reported that Indian intelligence services had passed on "unusually specific" information in the weeks before the attacks, and that at least some of it came from an IS suspect in their custody.

Sri Lankan authorities had also hinted that the US might have passed intelligence on, but the US ambassador later denied the claim, although the FBI had offered official help.

Wijewardene said that intelligence agencies from Australia, the UK and the UAE were also collaborating with Sri Lankan agencies.

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