COLOMBO, Sri Lanka (AP) — Sri Lanka's prime minister has testified before a parliamentary committee investigating the Islamic State-inspired Easter Sunday bomb attacks and has said the country should prepare itself for new types of terrorism.

Ranil Wickremesinghe said Tuesday that existing policing, investigative agencies and laws had experience with ethnic Tamil separatists during Sri Lanka's civil war but the country must now deal with "a new phase of terrorism."

Wickremesinghe says police already knew about some suspects but the April 21 suicide bomb attacks at three churches and three tourist hotels were the result of the security system failing to track the transition of religious extremists into terrorists.

The government has been criticized for failing to act upon intelligence received from foreign agencies before the attacks that killed more than 250 people.