Local Muslims alerted Police, Army about terrorist ‘safehouse’

Islamophobia that is slowly engulfing people across the globe, with Muslims being attacked globally for following the religion it was a local Muslim youngster that had first raised the alarm about the terrorist safe house in Sri Lankan’s Kalmunai town followed by a raid by the security forces that killed 15 people inside the safe house.

It was this young youth who was passing through the street near the iron bridge in the Sainthamaruthu locality who had noticed a man standing with a rifle inside the house.

And in no time, the residents gathered at the house, demanded the IDs of people inside.

Local Masjid committee too arrived at the spot after one of the men tried to fire in the air and the Police and the Army were alerted.

Taking action on the tip-off received, the whole episode lasted for about one-and-a-half hours on Friday evening said the sources.According to sources, at least 15 people, including children are believed to have been killed in the raid including the father and two brothers of Zaharan Hashim while Hashim’s wife and four-year-old daughter were rescued.

Hashim is the suspected mastermind behind the Easter Sunday blasts that has killed over 250 people in churches and hotels across the country.

“We were all deeply upset about blasts on Easter, especially the killing of so many people at their places of worship. This made us angry, and cautious too,” said a local resident Mohammed Sulfikkar.

“The youth who saw the man with the rifle alerted others and all of us went to the house. We were suspicious because they rented that house only 10 days ago, and had no contact with anyone in the area. When we asked them to show their IDs, they were evasive. One of them got angry and said they were Muslims and it was unfair to suspect them. But we told them that we were also Muslims. When the argument got heated, one of them took out a rifle and tried to fire at the air… many of us ran.”

Another committee member said: “When we reached the house, the situation had escalated. One of them started shouting at people and called everyone ‘betrayers’. In between, he promised they would not harm Muslims. But we were adamant that we wanted to search the house.”

“One of the youths inside started throwing currency notes at the crowd. He abused us in Tamil and shouted at us to ‘eat the money’ and leave them alone. All this happened in less than 30 minutes. We alerted a traffic police officer in the neighbourhood and soon the Army arrived,” said the committee member.