Denmark’s richest man lost three of his four young children when one of Sunday’s suicide bombers in Sri Lanka struck the upscale hotel where the family was staying.
Three days earlier, one of clothing billionaire Anders Holch Povlsen’s daughters, Alma, had shared a tender Instagram photo of her siblings — Astrid, Agnes and Alfred — enjoying their vacation.
With a caption calling them the “three little bears,” the snapshot shows the children huddled poolside, rows of palm trees and green rolling hills beyond them.
It was not clear which of the children died in the blast — one of a series of terrorist bombings that targeted churches and hotels on the South Asian island nation on Easter Sunday and killed at least 290 people.
There were no reports that Povlsen, 46, or his wife, Anne Storm Pedersen, 42, were injured.
“I can confirm that three children have been killed,” said Jesper Stubkier, communications manager for Povlsen’s Nordic retailer, Bestseller, in a statement to the Press Association on Monday.
“We have no further comment, and we ask that the family’s privacy is respected at this time.”
Povlsen is worth an estimated $6.7 billion, according to Forbes, and also holds large stakes in the British fashion retailer ASOS and Germany’s Zalando.
The couple has been lauded for their plans for the estimated 200,000 acres they own in the Scottish Highlands, which is believed to make them the largest landowner in that country, according to The Guardian.
They planned to rewild the property over the course of 200 years for the enjoyment of future generations — and just last week said they would make their children its guardians.
Intent on keeping their children grounded despite owning massive estates and even a former castle, the couple sent the kids to public school.
Povlsen had met his wife when she worked in sales at Bestseller.
The family had been staying at one of the four hotels that were bombed in or just outside the capital, Colombo, although it was not immediately known which one.
Denmark’s prime minister, Lars Lokke Rasmussen, said in a statement, “I can only condemn these disgusting terror actions, which are based on a grotesque view of humanity.”
With Wire Services