The mercury was touching 40°C (104°F) and the air so humid I felt like a wet towel seconds after stepping out of the car. Yet still hundreds gathered alongside me keeping vigil outside the wreckage of St Anthony’s Shrine in Colombo.
A ring of armed police and commandos stopped us getting close to the church but even from the cordon you could see – and just as vividly smell – the destruction wrought by a suicide bomber during Easter Mass the day before.
It’s not known exactly how many died in St Anthony’s, or St Sebastian’s, another Catholic church outside Colombo that was bombed, but it is thought to be well over 100. At least seven more explosions elsewhere on the islands took the total to around 250 lives lost.
