Watch: Bomb defused behind WION correspondent in Colombo

The Indian Coast Guard has beefed up surveillance and deployed more ships and aircraft for patrolling following a series of devastating blasts in Sri Lanka on Sunday. This has been done to ensure that no element that could pose as a security threat sneaks into the country through sea, a senior Coast Guard official said.

"We have deployed all our ships from Coast Guard stations at Tuticorin, Mandapam and Karaikal for surveillance," the official said. He said the surveillance was stepped up as soon as reports of the blasts started emerging Sunday. Seven suicide bombers, believed to be members of an Islamist extremist group, carried out a series of devastating blasts that tore through churches and luxury hotels in Sri Lanka on Easter Sunday, killing 290 people and wounding 500 others in the country's worst terror attack.

As many as 87 bomb detonators were found on Monday at a bus station in Colombo, police said, a day after a series of deadly blasts killed 290 people and wounded more than 500 others in the island nation. 
The bomb detonators were found at the Central Colombo bus station in Pettah area.
 

The police initially found 12 bomb detonators scattered on the ground. A further search revealed 75 more, a police statement said.

On Easter Sunday, a string of eight powerful blasts, including suicide attacks, struck churches and luxury hotels frequented by foreigners in Sri Lanka, killing 290 people, including three Indians, and shattering a decade of peace in the island nation since the end of the brutal civil war with the LTTE.

The blasts - one of the deadliest attacks in the country's history - targeted St Anthony's Church in Colombo, St Sebastian's Church in the western coastal town of Negombo and Zion Church in the eastern town of Batticaloa at around 8.45 a.m. (local time) as the Easter Sunday mass were in progress. 

Explosions were also reported from three five-star hotels - the Shangri-La, the Cinnamon Grand and the Kingsbury in Colombo. 

An Indian national, who escaped the worst terror attack in Sri Lanka on Easter Sunday, said it was a "horrific sight" to see huge chunks of glass on the bodies of fellow guests and white aprons of chefs drenched in blood after a suicide bomber struck a luxury hotel here.
Sri Lankan authorities said 290 people were killed and over 500 others injured when suicide bombers attacked three churches and luxury hotels in the country.
 

Akshat Saraf, 30, was in Colombo's Shangri-La Hotel with his wife and infant daughter when the explosions struck. They could hear blasts from their room on the 25th floor.

"First blast was very loud and our room started shaking. At first I thought it was a thunderstorm and I didn't pay too much attention. It had been raining in Sri Lanka for some time," he told CNN.

"It was the second blast when I sensed that something was not right," he said.

Saraf said he and his family grabbed their passports and took the emergency exit to head to the ground floor.

"When we reached the 4th floor we saw blood on the stairs," Saraf said. 

"When we evacuated that's when we saw a lot of ambulances and hotel staff helping the injured guests outside. "It was a horrific sight. When I saw injured guests, they seemed very serious. Some of them [had] chunks of glass stuck in their body. I could see some of the chefs in white aprons covered in blood." Police, army and emergency services personnel began arriving within five minutes, Saraf said. 

Guests were evacuated offsite, and then to a nearby shelter with a few hours, he added.

At least six Indians died in the blasts.

On Sunday, India identified K M Lakshminarayan, Narayan Chandrashekhar and Lakshmana Gowda Ramesh as the three Indians who died in the blasts.

The Indian High Commission on Monday confirmed the deaths of two more Indians in the blasts - K G Hanumantharayappa and M Rangappa.

Kerala Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan Sunday identified a Keralite, P S Rasina, among those killed in the blasts.