SRI LANKA: Five people were killed and 11 wounded when a suspected Tamil Tiger suicide bomber blew herself up in a police station in the Sri Lankan capital yesterday, shattering more than two years of relative peace
Police said the woman detonated the bomb as she was being frisked, but the target was government minister Mr Douglas Devananda, a Tamil who is a vocal opponent of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) rebels.
"A female has gone into the ministry of Douglas Devananda and wanted to meet him ... Permission was not granted. People from ministerial security followed her and these officials took her into the police station. While they tried to search her, she exploded herself," said police spokesman Mr Rienzie Perera.
"It is obvious Douglas was the target," he said.
The bomber was among the five dead.
Peace talks to end Sri Lanka's decades-long civil war have been on hold for more than a year but both sides have been observing a Norwegian-brokered truce signed in February 2002 that put an end to fighting that had killed 64,000.
No one claimed responsibility and the Tigers offered no immediate comment on the blast, which happened on Colombo's main thoroughfare, near the prime minister's official residence and across the road from the US and British embassies.
But police and army officials said they believed the Tigers, who began fighting for a separate state for the island's minority Tamils in 1983, were responsible.
"It is a total violation of the ceasefire agreement. There is not doubt this is the work of the LTTE but we do not yet have proof," Defence Secretary Mr Cyril Herath said.
But he added that the army would continue to observe the truce. - (Reuters)