Bomb kills 16 near Sri Lankan capital

NUGEGODA, Sri Lanka - A bomb exploded Wednesday evening near the entrance to a popular department store in a busy Colombo suburb, killing 16 people and wounding 37 in a rare attack on civilians that the military blamed on Tamil Tiger rebels.

The blast occurred just outside the four-story No Limits store in Nugegoda as commuters crowded a nearby bus stop during the evening rush hour, officials said.

"We know that the attack bears all the hallmarks of the LTTE," military spokesman Brig. Udaya Nanayakkara said, referring to the rebel group by its formal name, the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam. "It is nobody else but the LTTE."

If confirmed, it would be a rare attack by the separatist group on a purely civilian area in recent years, although civilians have been killed in previous attacks on government and military targets.

Rebel spokesman Rasiah Ilanthirayan did not answer repeated calls from The Associated Press seeking comment.

Earlier in the day, a female suicide bomber sent by the Tamil rebels killed one person and wounded two others in an unsuccessful attempt to assassinate a government minister in his office in Colombo.

The rebels' top leader blamed the government for a recent escalation of fighting in the more than two-decade-old civil war that has killed an estimated 70,000 in the Indian Ocean island nation.

The powerful blast at the department store shattered windows and left piles of crumbled concrete on the bloodstained sidewalk, according to an AP photographer at the scene.

Crumpled and charred pieces of motorcycles and three-wheeled taxis were scattered nearby.

Police and firefighters searched the debris for victims.

The military said at least 16 people were killed and 37 injured. At a nearby hospital, residents came in search of missing relatives. One girl who suffered a broken arm in the attack sat with her mother as she received treatment.

"I was on the top floor of a shoe shop with my wife and child when I heard a big blast and there were glass pieces all over us," resident A. Jayasena told AP Television News. "As we ran away, I saw the entrance of the No Limit shop burning, and in the midst of it, a schoolgirl on the floor trying to get up and then falling back again."

Jayasena and his daughter suffered minor injuries, while his wife was in the hospital being treated for more serious wounds, he said.

The bomb may have exploded when a security guard at the mall became suspicious about a package and tried to open it, a defense official said, speaking on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak to the media.

However, police at the scene said the explosives may have been in one of the three-wheeled taxis that were destroyed.

The earlier suicide bombing targeted the offices of Douglas Devananda, the minister of social services and the leader of the Eelam People's Democratic Party, an ethnic Tamil party considered a rival to the separatist Tamil Tigers, the military said.

Devananda, the target of repeated assassination attempts, was not injured in the attack, the military said. The blast killed one of his staff members and injured two others, one critically, said Dr. Hector Weerasinghe, the medical director of Colombo National Hospital. The bomber also died.

The rebel group has been fighting since 1983 to create a separate homeland for Sri Lanka's minority Tamils following decades of discrimination by governments controlled by the Sinhalese majority.

In the past two years, rebel bombers had avoided deliberately targeting civilians, though they have ambushed military convoys at crowded places, causing many civilian deaths.

Source: news.yahoo.com