Sri Lanka Struggles to Come to Terms With the Implications of the Easter Sunday Bombings

Balkan Fernando was at his home in Kochchikade, a suburb north of Sri Lanka’s capital, when he heard the first bomb go off around 8:45 a.m.

He sprinted toward the deafening sound that had come from nearby St. Anthony’s Shrine and found members of the country’s Christian minority evacuating their Easter service amid a scene of carnal wreckage.

“It must’ve been at the end of mass, during the holy communion,” he tells TIME.

Balkan Fernando was at his home in Kochchikade, a suburb north of Sri Lanka’s capital, when he heard the first bomb go off around 8:45 a.m. He sprinted toward the deafening sound that had come from nearby St. Anthony’s Shrine and found members of the country’s Christian minority evacuating their Easter service amid a scene of carnal wreckage. “It must’ve been at the end of mass, during the holy communion,” he tells TIME.