Five Brits killed in Sri Lankan Bombings

Five British nationals are among the 207 dead in the Sri Lankan terror attacks, it has been confirmed.

Police say at least 207 people have been killed and 450 injured in eight blasts, six of which were in Colombo.

Three Britons and two with joint US and UK citizenship are among the dead, Sri Lanka’s foreign ministry said.

The Foreign Office has not confirmed the figure and said it was working with the Sri Lankan authorities to establish the number of citizens who had died.

Officials in Sri Lanka say there have been at least 27 foreign casualties.

Danish, Turkish and Dutch citizens are also among those known to have died.

The UK’s High Commissioner to Sri Lanka, James Dauris, said he had spoken with Britons in hospital “who have been affected by today’s senseless attacks”.

Mr Dauris urged those still in the country to contact relatives and to follow instructions from local authorities.

In the capital Colombo, St Anthony’s Shrine and the Cinnamon Grand, Shangri-La and Kingsbury hotels were targeted.

There were also explosions at a hotel near Dehiwala zoo and in the residential district of Dematagoda.

Further blasts took place in St Sebastian’s Church in Negombo, a town approximately 20 miles north of Colombo, and at Zion Church in Batticaloa, on the east coast.

Kieran Arasaratnam, a professor at Imperial College London, was on his way to the breakfast room in the Shangri-La hotel when he heard the blast.

He told the BBC he saw a young child, aged about eight or nine, being carried to an ambulance, and all around him, “everyone’s just running in panic”.

“The military was coming in. It’s just total chaos. So I then just literally ran out and then I looked to the room on the right and there’s blood everywhere.”