NEGOMBO, Sri Lanka - The long, narrow village road leading to St. Sebastian's Catholic Church became a gantlet of grief on Monday .
Every family in Negombo seemed to have lost someone in the Easter Sunday bombings at churches and hotels that left more than 290 dead in several scattered locations. Everyone seemed to have a relative either dead or fighting for life in a hospital ward. They also wondered, after Sri Lanka's small but stable Christian minority of about eight per cent had lived in relative peace with other religious groups for generations, whether these suicide attacks - tentatively linked by officials to a local Islamist militia - would trigger a larger outburst of communal suspicion and hate.
Several people expressed fears of Muslim extremism spreading in a country that has so far avoided it, even as armed Islamist extremists wreaked havoc in many other countries. In several conversations, Muslim shopkeepers said they too were horrified by the Easter attacks - and worried that their minority community could be blamed.