Bomb hits Sri Lanka capital
2008-09-29 14:02
Colombo - Suspected Tamil separatists set off a bomb in a parking lot in Sri Lanka's capital on Monday, wounding three people a day after fighting in the country's intensifying civil war killed 20 rebels and one soldier, the military said.
The violence came as government forces closed in on the rebels' administrative capital of Kilinochchi in a campaign aimed at routing the guerrillas and ending the 25-year-old war that has killed more than 70 000 people.
The bomb, placed between two vehicles in a parking lot in Colombo's busy Pettah neighbourhood, exploded shortly after noon and slightly wounded three bystanders, said military spokesperson Brig Udaya Nanayakkara. The Tamil Tigers, who have been accused of scores of bombings and other attacks on civilians, were suspected in the blast, he said.
Meanwhile, air force helicopters attacked rebel bunker lines on Monday in support of ground troops in the Kilinochchi district, the military said.
In fighting on Sunday, troops captured part of a strategic road in the district after a seven-hour battle that killed seven rebels and one soldier, the military said in a statement.
Attacks on rebel bunkers and other scattered fighting killed 11 rebels in the Welioya, Jaffna and Vavuniya districts, it said.
Two other rebels were killed in a brief clash in Ampara in the east, which the government ousted the rebels from last year, the military said.
With nearly all communications to the north severed, rebel spokespeople could not be contacted for comment.
It was not possible to verify the military's reports because most journalists and other independent observers are barred from the war zone. Both sides often exaggerate their enemy's losses and underreport their own.
Also on Monday, the military said a soldier who had been wounded in a rebel suicide attack on Sunday in the northern town of Vavuniya died from his injuries.
The Tamil Tigers have fought since 1983 to create an independent state for Sri Lanka's minority Tamils following decades of marginalisation by governments dominated by the Sinhalese majority.
- AP