The Islamic State group has claimed responsibility for the Easter attacks in Sri Lanka that killed at least 321 people, but offered no evidence.
The extremist group made the claim Tuesday via its Aamaq news agency.
The claim said: “The perpetrators of the attack that targeted nationals of the countries of the coalitions and Christians in Sri Lanka before yesterday are fighters from the Islamic State.”
It offered no photographs or videos of attackers pledging their loyalty to the group.
The group, which has lost all the territory it once held in Iraq and Syria, has made a series of unsupported claims of responsibility.
Sri Lankan officials have blamed a local Islamic extremist group for the attack.
The office of New Zealand’s Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern, meanwhile, says she is aware of comments linking Sri Lanka’s Easter bombings to the mosque attacks in Christchurch, though it hasn’t “seen any intelligence upon which such an assessment might be based.”
The statement came Tuesday after Sri Lanka’s minister of defense, Ruwan Wijewardene, made the claim to Parliament, without offering evidence.
Ardern’s office also added that it understood “the Sri Lankan investigation into the attack is in its early stages.”
The Christchurch shootings killed 50 people in March.
