The move is partly aimed at addressing concerns about the fate of hundreds of EU citizens who fought for Islamic State and are now detained in Iraq and Syria. Many of them could return to Europe and not face trial because of a lack of evidence against them, a factor that has contributed to unease in several EU countries over returning fighters.

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The new database will put together information from all the 28 EU countries on ongoing investigations, prosecutions, and convictions of terrorists, facilitating cooperation among national prosecutors.

This is expected to help convict war criminals and other terrorists, who might otherwise face trials for a lesser crime or no trial at all because national investigations have failed to gather enough evidence against them.

Because of parallel investigations in different EU states, terrorists could face lighter punishments if probes are not coordinated as "nobody can be prosecuted for the same crime twice," noted Ladislav Hamran, who chairs Eurojust, the EU agency that will manage the database and is in charge of coordinating judicial investigations among EU states.

The new tool could also help prevent new attacks in Europe, as prosecutors will have access to more information on suspects, Hamran told a news conference.

The continent was hit by several attacks in recent years, including two major ones in Paris in November 2015 and in Brussels a few months later which killed dozens of people.

The register will gather information on jihadists, political extremists and all sorts of radical terrorists. But its immediate use is likely to concern returning foreign fighters.

The EU security commissioner Julian King said that at least 1,300 EU citizens, more than half of whom are children, are being held in Syria and Iraq.

National authorities have for years been reluctant to share information about prosecutions, although cross-border cooperation has increased after the Paris attacks, Eurojust data shows.

The EU anti-terrorism chief, Gilles de Kerchove, said the bloc was also trying to facilitate trials of suspects directly in Iraq.

The new register is open only to EU states. Britain is due to leave the bloc on Oct. 31 and King said that if it left without a withdrawal agreement, it would not be able to access information in that database.

Hamran also urged the setting up of secure, encrypted channels to transfer electronic evidence to mitigate risks from cyberattacks.

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Sunday's assault on a base in west-central Mali was the latest in a series of deadly raids by heavily armed jihadists, who have stepped up their attacks in central Mali and neighboring Burkina Faso and Niger in recent months.

The militants have tapped into festering tensions between semi-nomadic Fulani herders and farming communities across West Africa's semi-arid Sahel region to try to win support among the Fulani, who often feel politically and socially marginalized.

Suspected militiamen from the Dogon ethnic group killed about 160 Fulani in the village of Ogossagou on March 23 in Mali's worst ethnic bloodletting in living memory.

In a statement, Jama'at Nusrat al-Islam wal-Muslimin (JNIM), the leading Islamist group in Mali, said its attack was "in commitment to its past vow to avenge and exact retribution for the martyrs from the Ogossagou massacre," according to U.S.-based SITE, which monitors jihadist websites.

Previous Islamist attacks have led to reprisals by ethnic militia against Fulani civilians, feeding a cycle of violence that regional forces, U.N. peacekeepers and thousands of French troops deployed to the zone have proved unable to break.

JNIM said it had killed at least 16 soldiers and taken two hostage, while four of its own fighters died in combat. Mali's Defense Ministry said on Saturday that 11 soldiers had been killed.

Mali President Ibrahim Boubacar Keita appointed a new prime minister on Monday, days after the government resigned following pressure to respond to the Ogossagou massacre and other violence.

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The coordinated bombings that ripped through churches and luxury hotels were carried out by seven suicide bombers from a militant group named National Thowfeek Jamaath, Health Minister Rajitha Senaratne said.

International intelligence agencies warned of the attacks several times starting April 4, Senaratne said. On April 9, the defense ministry wrote to the police chief with intelligence that included the group's name, he said. On April 11, police wrote to the heads of security of the judiciary and diplomatic security division, Senaratne said.

It was not immediately clear what action, if any, was taken in response. Authorities said little was known about the group except that its name had appeared in intelligence reports.

Because of political dysfunction within the government, Seranatne said, Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe and his Cabinet were kept in the dark about the intelligence until after the attacks.

President Maithrela Sirisena, who was out of the country at the time of the attacks, ousted Wickremesinghe in late October and dissolved the Cabinet. The Supreme Court eventually reversed his actions, but the prime minister has not been allowed into meetings of the Security Council since October.

All of the bombers were Sri Lankan citizens, but authorities suspect foreign links, Senaratne said.

Earlier, Ariyananda Welianga, a government forensic crime investigator, said an analysis of the attackers' body parts made clear that they were suicide bombers. He said most of the attacks were carried out by individual bombers, with two at Colombo's Shangri-La Hotel.

The bombings, Sri Lanka's deadliest violence since a devastating civil war ended a decade ago on the island nation, killed at least 290 people with more than 500 wounded, Police spokesman Ruwan Gunasekara said Monday.

Meanwhile, Sri Lankan police investigating the bombings are examining reports that intelligence agencies had warnings of possible attacks, officials said Monday.

Two government ministers have alluded to intelligence failures. Telecommunications Minister Harin Fernando tweeted, "Some intelligence officers were aware of this incidence. Therefore there was a delay in action. Serious action needs to be taken as to why this warning was ignored."

He said his father had heard of the possibility of an attack as well and had warned him not to enter popular churches.

And Mano Ganeshan, the minister for national integration, said his ministry's security officers had been warned by their division about the possibility that two suicide bombers would target politicians.

The police's Criminal Investigation Department, which is handling the investigation into the blasts, will look into those reports, Gunasekara said.

Cardinal Malcolm Ranjith, the archbishop of Colombo, said the attacks could have been thwarted.

"We placed our hands on our heads when we came to know that these deaths could have been avoided. Why this was not prevented?" he said.

Earlier, Defense Minister Ruwan Wijewardena described the blasts as a terrorist attack by religious extremists, and police said 13 suspects had been arrested, though there was no immediate claim of responsibility.

The Tamil Tigers, once a powerful rebel army known for its use of suicide bombers, was crushed by the government in 2009, and had little history of targeting Christians. While anti-Muslim bigotry has swept the island in recent years, fed by Buddhist nationalists, the island also has no history of violent Muslim militants. The country's small Christian community has seen only scattered incidents of harassment in recent years.

Most of those killed were Sri Lankans. But the three bombed hotels and one of the churches, St. Anthony's Shrine, are frequented by foreign tourists, and Sri Lanka's Foreign Ministry said the bodies of at least 27 foreigners from a variety of countries were recovered.

The U.S. said "several" Americans were among the dead, while Britain, India, China, Japan and Portugal said they, too, lost citizens.

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After the collapse of Islamic State's self-declared caliphate in Syria and Iraq, countries around the world are wrestling with how to handle militants and their families seeking to return.

The population of Kosovo, which declared independence from Serbia in 2008, is nominally 90% Muslim, but largely secular in outlook.

More than 300 Kosovo citizens have traveled to Syria since 2012 and 70 men who fought alongside militant groups were killed.

"Today in the early hours of the morning an important and sensitive operation was organized in which the government of Kosovo with the help of the United States of America has returned 110 of its citizens from Syria," Kosovan Justice Minister Abelard Tahiri said at a press conference.

Tahiri did not specify what role the United States had played but a plane with a U.S. flag on its tail was seen in the cargo area of Pristina airport as the operation was ongoing.

When asked about the return of fighters to Kosovo and the separate return of a fighter to Bosnia, U.S. military spokesman Sean Robertson said, "U.S. assets were used in support of this repatriation operation."

"At no time did the U.S. take custody of the FTF [foreign terrorist fighter] detainees," Robertson said. He declined to provide further details, citing security reasons.

Authorities said among those who were returned were four fighters, 32 women and 74 children, including nine without a parent.

The four fighters were immediately arrested and the state prosecutor said indictments against them will soon follow.

After several hours at the airport, two busloads of women and children were transported under police escort to an army barracks just outside Pristina.

Police said 30 Kosovan fighters, 49 women and 8 children still remain in the conflict zones. "We will not stop before bringing every citizen of the Republic of Kosovo back to their country and anyone that has committed any crime or was part of these terrorist organizations will face the justice," Tahiri said.

"As Kosovo, we cannot allow that our citizens be a threat to the West and to our allies."

International and local security agencies have previously warned of the risk posed by returning fighters. In 2015, Kosovo adopted a law making fighting in foreign conflicts punishable by up to 15 years in jail.

The United States commended Kosovo for the return of its citizens and called other countries to do the same.

"With this repatriation, Kosovo has set an important example for all members of the Global Coalition to Defeat ISIS and the international community to follow. We applaud their compassion in accepting the return of this large number of civilians," the U.S. Embassy in Pristina said in a statement.

There have been no Islamist attacks on Kosovan soil, although more than 100 men have been jailed or indicted on charges of fighting in Syria and Iraq. Some of them were found guilty of planning attacks in Kosovo.

Prosecutors said they were investigating 156 other suspects.

The government has said a form of radical Islam had been imported to Kosovo by non-governmental organizations from the Middle East after the end of its 1998-99 war of secession from Serbia.

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