Sri Lanka terror victims' family reveal agony of finding out about attack from London home

Amelie Linsey, 15, and Daniel Linsey, 19, were killed in the Sri Lanka attacks.
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The mother and brother of two young victims of the Sri Lanka terror attacks have spoken of their torment, saying “now everything seems so trivial”.

Londoners Amelie and Daniel Linsey, aged 15 and 19, were killed when one of seven suicide bombers struck the Shangri-La hotel in Colombo.

They had been having breakfast with their father Matthew when two bombings happened in quick succession.

Older brother David Linsey, 21, stayed behind in London with his mother, Angelina, and 11-year-old brother.

The Oxford undergraduate remembered being "woken by screaming" on the morning of the attacks.

Sri Lanka bombings - In pictures

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He told the Daily Mail: “My little brother Ethan and my mother were hysterical with grief. My brother told me what had happened. My mother couldn’t speak. He said they were gone.

“I called my father,” he added. “He was at the hospital… He told us exactly what had happened and kept saying how sorry he was.

“It wasn’t his fault but he felt he could have done things differently. They were only going for breakfast.”

A heartbroken Mrs Linsey described her daughter Amelie as “always there for all of us".

“She was always very calm and very fair. She knew inherently the right thing to do,” she said.

She said the "important thing" for her was that Amelie and Daniel were "fearless — that they were never afraid to do anything and took things as far as they wanted to".

Mr Linsey, 60, previously told the Times he faced a desperate decision over which of his injured children to save after they were caught in the blast.

“I couldn’t move them, they were both knocked out,” he said.

“My son looked worse than my daughter. I tried to revive him. A lady said she’d take my daughter. I carried my son downstairs to an ambulance, we took him to the hospital.

“I yelled, ‘Please help my son, please help, please help.’ I thought my daughter was better off. I couldn’t find her because I was with my son. They sadly passed away.”

Anders Holch Povlsen and his wife Anne Holch Povlsen
AFP/Getty Images

It came after ASOS billionaire Anders Holch Povlsen revealed the names of his children that were killed in the attacks.

Son Alfred and daughters Alma and Agnes all died, while third daughter Astrid survived the blasts at the Shangri-La hotel.

In a text message read out in front of 700 mourners at a memorial in the Danish town of Brande on Thursday, Mr Povlsen and his wife, Anne, described the loss of their three children as “completely incomprehensible”, local news site Herning Folkeblad reported.

More than 250 people were killed, including eight Brits, in the bombings at luxury hotels and churches on Easter Sunday.

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