The head of the Catholic Church and general secretary of Muslim theologians in India on May 4 proposed to send a high level interfaith delegation to Sri Lanka to explore ways to help the island nation struggling to recover from terrorist attacks.

“The most ghastly serial bomb blasts in Sri Lanka’s churches and hotels on Easter Sunday have shocked the entire civilized society all over the world. We …condemn unequivocally these dastardly acts,” Cardinal Oswald Gracias and Maulana Mahmood A. Madani said in a joint press statement issued in Mumbai expressing solidarity with the terror victims.

Cardinal Gracias is the president of the Catholic Bishops’ Conference of India and Maulana Madani is the general secretary of Jamiat Ulama-I-Hind or the Council of Indian Muslim theologians.

On April 21, Easter Sunday, seven suicide bombers targeted three churches and three luxury hotels in a series of coordinated terrorist attacks in Sri Lanka. At least 253 people were killed and more than 500 wounded. As many as 42 foreign nationals, including more than a dozen Indians, also died.

“Sri Lanka being our closest neighbour, we are ready with an offer of help to enable the victims to get over the unprecedented crisis in their lives. We propose to depute a high level delegation of various faiths to Sri Lanka to explore the possibilities of cooperation and also to offer our sincere condolence to the bereaved families,” says the statement from the cardinal and the maulana.

The Islamic State, a terrorist group, has claimed responsibility for the attacks.