On 21 April 2019, a group of bombers attacked three churches and three hotels in Sri Lanka, claiming the lives of more than 250 people in the deadliest violence the country has seen since the end of the internal conflict in 2009. Beginning on 22 April 2019, mobs of young and sometimes armed men began going door to door in the Negombo area, looking to evict refugees and asylum-seekers originally from Muslim-majority countries. Up to this point, refugees and asylum-seekers said they had lived peacefully in the area, only ever encountering occasional hostility.
