Sri Lanka updates: President Trump pledges US support; death toll rises

More developments have come to light about the horrific Easter Sunday bombings at multiple churches and other locations in Sri Lanka.

As Christians around the world celebrated Easter, the Asian island country of Sri Lanka was rocked by a series of nine bombings at churches and other locations in an apparent terror attack.

Here is what we've found out since TheBlaze's earlier report on the attacks:

The most recent casualty numbers place the death toll at 290, and the wounded total is over 500. The Sri Lankan government has identified 31 foreign nationals among the dead. Two of them, the Sri Lankan Embassy says, hold both U.S. and U.K. nationalities. The plurality of the foreign nationals identified as killed so far are from India.

Sri Lankan officials are blaming the attacks on National Thowheeth Jama'ath, a little-known local jihadist organization, though no group has publicly claimed responsibility yet.

"We do not believe these attacks were carried out by a group of people who were confined to this country," Sri Lankan government spokesman Rajitha Senaratne said at a news conference. "There was an international network without which these attacks could not have succeeded."

Additionally, an unnamed U.S. official told CNN that the attack was "likely" ISIS-inspired. On that note, a known ISIS figure was believed to have been trying to recruit Sri Lankans as far back as 2017.

President Donald Trump has spoken with Sri Lanka's prime minister and called the attacks "unthinkable." During his call with Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe, Trump pledged American support to help bring the perpetrators of the attacks "to justice."

"It's a terrible, terrible thing," the president told reporters at Monday's White House Easter Egg hunt. "I've been fighting it [presumably jihadist terrorism] for a long, long time. A lot of people have. A lot of people don't want to talk about it."

"We urge that any evildoers be brought to justice expeditiously and America is prepared to support that," reads a statement from Secretary of State Mike Pompeo. "We stand committed, resolved, to confront terrorism together."

Wickremesinghe's government has invoked emergency powers in the wake of the devastation and has arrested 24 people in relation to the bombings. The emergency powers "will be limited to counter terrorism regulations," the Sri Lankan government said, adding that these measures are being taken to allow law enforcement to "to ensure public security."