Toll in Sri Lanka blasts rises to 207: police

Seven people were arrested andthree police officers were killed during a raid on a house in Colombo on Sunday as the death toll from a rash of bombings at churches and hotels in Sri Lanka rose past 200, police and local media said.

“Altogether we have information of 207 dead from allhospitals. According to the information as of now we have 450 injured people admitted to hospitals,” Police Spokesman Ruwan Gunasekera told reporters in Colombo.

Further details of the raid on the house in the Sri Lankancapital were not immediately available.

The eight explosions, some of which officials said weresuicide bomb attacks, led to an immediate clampdown, with th egovernment declaring a curfew and blocking access to majo rsocial media and messaging sites, including Facebook and WhatsApp.

Two Turkish citizens wereamong the more than 200 killed in bomb blasts at three churchesand four hotels in Sri Lanka on Sunday, according to Turkey’sstate media Anadolu.

Anadolu said the Turks were engineers working on a projectin Sri Lanka.