Sri Lanka says 2 militants, civilian killed in fresh raid

A Sri Lankan soldier stands guard at the damaged St. Anthony's Church or Shrine in Colombo, Sri Lanka, Friday, April 26, 2019. Priests have allowed journalists inside St. Anthony's Church in Sri Lanka for the first time since it was targeted in a series of Islamic State-claimed suicide bombings that killed over 250 people. Broken glass littered the sanctuary's damaged pews and blood stained the floor. Shoes left by panicked worshippers remained in the darkened church, and broken bottles of holy water lay on the floor. (AP Photo/Manish Swarup)

In this Thursday, April 25, 2019 photo, sunlight steams in from gaping holes, as a surveyor works at St. Sebastian's Church, where a suicide bomber blew himself up on Easter Sunday in Negombo, north of Colombo, Sri Lanka. Nearly a week later, the smell of death is everywhere, though the bodies are long gone. Yet somehow, there’s a beauty to St. Sebastian’s, a neighborhood church in a Catholic enclave north of Sri Lanka’s capital. You can see the beauty in the broken stained-glass windows. It’s there in the little statues that refused to fall over, and despite the swarms of police and soldiers who seem to be everywhere now in the streets of the seaside town of Negombo. (AP Photo/Manish Swarup)

Sri Lanka's military says soldiers are raiding an area in the country's east where a gunfight between troops and suspects linked to the Easter suicide bombings killed two militants and one civilian.

Maj. Gen. Aruna Jayasekara, the local military commander, said Saturday that at least three people were wounded in the gunbattle that saw at least three explosions.

Jayasekara says soldiers and police wanted to wait until daylight to carry out further raids given houses being built so close together.

Meanwhile, the military says security forces have recovered explosives, detonators, "suicide kits," military uniforms and Islamic State group flags during the raids.

The Easter suicide bombings, claimed by the Islamic State group, targeted churches and hotels and killed at least 250 people.