Islamic state has claimed responsibility for coordinated bombings in Sri Lanka which killed 321 people and injured about 500 others, the group’s AMAQ news agency said on Tuesday.

The group did not give evidence for its claim, a Reuters news report said.

The statement on the Amaq news agency, which the group uses to put out statements, claimed that the attack was the work of “fighters of the Islamic State”.

Until now, no group had claimed responsibility for the explosions, many of them suicide bombings.

Sri Lankan government has blamed the blasts on local Islamist group National Thowheed Jamath (NTJ).

In the meantime, Sri Lanka’s state minister of defense said the Easter attack on churches, hotels and other sites was “carried out in retaliation” for the shooting massacre at two New Zealand mosques last month.

Ruwan Wijewardene, told Parliament the government possessed information that the series of bombings in and outside of Colombo that killed more than 300 people was carried out “by an Islamic fundamentalist group” in response to the Christchurch attacks. 

He did not provide evidence or explain the source of the information.

The six near-simultaneous attacks on three churches and three luxury hotels and three related blasts later Sunday was Sri Lanka’s deadliest violence in a decade. 

Wijewardene said the death toll from the attack now stood at 321 people, with 500 wounded.
 
At least 45 children were among the more than 320 people killed in the suicide bomb attacks in Sri Lanka, the United Nations said Tuesday.

“The total now is 45 children who died,” UNICEF spokesman Christophe Boulierac told reporters in Geneva, stressing that others “are wounded and are now fighting for their lives,” meaning the toll among minors from the Sunday attacks could rise.

-Agencies