Sri Lanka’s president said Sunday he will appoint a committee chaired by a retired Supreme Court judge to investigate allegations made in a British television report that the South Asian country’s intelligence was complicit in the 2019 Easter Sunday bombings that killed 269 people.

The attacks, which included simultaneous suicide bombings, targeted three churches and three tourist hotels. The dead included 42 foreigners from 14 countries.

President Ranil Wickremesinghe's decision to appoint a committee headed by a judge to investigate claims that Sri Lankan intelligence had a hand in the bombings that were carried out by Islamic militants came under pressure from opposition lawmakers, religious leaders, activists as well as the victims' relatives. They say that previous probes failed to reveal the truth behind the bombings.

The committee's primary mission is to investigate the "serious allegations recently brought to light by Channel 4 in a broadcast video," the president's office said in a statement Sunday. It said that the "allegations have added fuel to the fire."

PASSENGERS EVACUATED IN SINGAPORE AFTER ENGINE FIRE FILLS CABIN OF AIR CHINA JET WITH SMOKE

The statement said that a former attorney general "has made similar claims, suggesting the existence of a mastermind behind the devastating Easter bomb attack." It said that a parliamentary committee would separately investigate and "address these concerns comprehensively."

In a program broadcast Tuesday, Channel 4 interviewed a man who said had arranged a meeting between a local Islamic State-inspired group, National Thowheed Jamath, and a top state intelligence official loyal to former President Gotabaya Rajapaksa to formulate a plot to create instability and enable Rajapaksa, a former senior defense official, to win the 2019 presidential election.

Rajapaksa was forced to resign in mid-2022 after mass protests over the country’s worst economic crisis.

Rajapaksa on Thursday denied the allegations against him, saying that the claim that "a group of Islamic extremists launched suicide attacks in order to make me president is absurd."

The operator of the wrecked Fukushima nuclear power plant said Monday that it has safely completed the first release of treated radioactive water from the plant into the sea and will inspect and clean the facility before starting the second round in a few weeks.

The Fukushima Daiichi plant began discharging the treated and diluted wastewater into the Pacific Ocean on Aug. 24. The water has accumulated since the plant was damaged by a massive earthquake and tsunami in 2011, and the start of its release is a milestone in the plant's decommissioning.

The discharge, which is expected to continue for decades until the decommissioning is finished, has been strongly opposed by fishing groups and by neighboring countries. China has banned all imports of Japanese seafood in response, hurting producers and exporters and prompting the Japanese government to compile an emergency relief fund. Groups in South Korea have also fiercely protested, demanding Japan stop the release.

JAPAN VOWS TO SUPPORT FISHERIES DURING COUNTRY'S DECADES-LONG PROCESS OF RELEASING FUKUSHIMA NUCLEAR WASTE

Prime Minister Fumio Kishida, at summits last week of Southeast Asian countries and the Group of 20 nations, stressed the safety and transparency of the release to win international support and sought the immediate lifting of China's ban.

During the 17-day first release, the plant's operator, Tokyo Electric Power Company Holdings, said it discharged 7,800 tons of treated water from 10 tanks. About 1.34 million tons of radioactive wastewater is stored in about 1,000 tanks at the plant.

Plant workers will rinse the pipeline and other equipment and inspect the system over the next few weeks before starting the release of the second round of 7,800 tons stored in 10 other tanks, TEPCO spokesperson Teruaki Kobashi told reporters Monday.

All sampling data from seawater and fish since the start of the release have been way below set safety limits, officials said.

The International Atomic Energy Agency has been cooperating with Japan and reviewed the safety of the project. It concluded that the release, if carried out precisely as planned, would have a negligible impact on the environment, marine life and human health. On Monday, a team of South Korean experts from the Korea Institute of Nuclear Safety, under an agreement between South Korea and the U.N. nuclear agency, visited an IAEA office set up at the Fukushima plant to monitor the release and share information, the IAEA said in a statement. The South Korean team has been in Japan for the last two weeks and met with IAEA officials offsite.

CHINA CONDEMNS JAPAN’S PLAN TO RELEASE FUKUSHIMA’S RADIOACTIVE WASTEWATER INTO THE SEA

TEPCO and the government say the wastewater is treated to reduce radioactive materials to safe levels, and then is diluted with seawater to make it much safer than international standards.

The radioactive wastewater has accumulated since three of the plant's reactors were damaged by the 2011 earthquake and tsunami. It continues to grow because cooling water used on the damaged reactors leaks into the reactor basements, where it mixes with groundwater.

TEPCO plans to release 31,200 tons of treated water through March 2024, and officials say the pace will pick up later.

The government and TEPCO say the discharge is unavoidable because the tanks will reach their capacity of 1.37 million tons next year and space at the plant is needed for its decommissioning.