Bus Blasts Kill 15 People in Sri Lanka

Associated Press, Sat January 6, 2007 07:18 EST . COLOMBO, Sri Lanka _ A bomb on a Sri Lanka passenger bus killed at least 15 people and wounded dozens more Saturday, officials said, blaming Tamil Tiger rebels.

The blast, which police suspect was triggered by a female suicide bomber, was the country's second bus bombing in as many days _ a sign of escalation of the bloody ethnic conflict ravaging the tropical island nation off southern India.

Police blamed Tamil Tiger rebels for the bus attack in the coastal town of Meetiyagoda, 95 kilometers (60 miles) south of the capital, Colombo, and near a number of popular resort towns.

Though violence has risen sharply in Sri Lanka over the past year, most of it has occurred in the ethnic Tamil-dominated north and east.

Officials said the bus wreckage indicated that a suicide bomber may have been behind the attack, which ripped through the bus on the crowded southern coast road early Saturday afternoon.

``There is a female body inside the bus, and looking at the damage the blast has caused around her, we suspect that she could have been a suicide bomber,'' said senior police official Upul Ariyaratne.

About 65 passengers had been on bus, Ariyaratne said, and some 40 had been admitted to hospitals.

The Tigers have made suicide bombings a hallmark of their two-decade campaign to carve out a separate state for the minority Tamils, who suffered years of discrimination by the Sinhalese-dominated government.

However, the Tigers denied any role in Saturday's bloodshed.

``We totally deny that (the bus bombing). We did not do that,'' the rebels' military spokesman, Rasiah Ilanthirayan, told The Associated Press by telephone from the group's northern stronghold, Kilinochchi.

Officials say the two bombings _ six people were killed in a similar bus attack Friday on a highway northeast of Colombo _ indicate that months of fighting have weakened the rebels, officially called the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam or LTTE.

``The LTTE is losing their strength in the east. Because of this, they are targeting innocent civilians,'' said military spokesman Brig. Prasad Samarasinghe.

The military has pushed harder in recent months against the rebels, who control much of the island's north and parts of the east, where they run their own de facto state.

Both bus explosions came days after the rebels warned the government of ``serious repercussions'' for government airstrikes they said had killed 16 Tamil civilians, including eight children, in a Tiger-controlled northwestern area. The military said it targeted only rebel positions in the airstrikes Tuesday.

``This looks like a retaliatory attack for the air force raids,'' said independent political analyst Sunanda Deshapriya.

``The LTTE has gone back to its previous tactic of attacking Sinhalese civilians,'' Deshapriya said. ``It wants to send a message through terror again.''

In other violence, three separate roadside bombings, blamed on the insurgents, killed four soldiers and a civilian in the north.

Violence has grown in Sri Lanka over the past year and has approached full-scale war, with more than 3,600 fighters and civilians killed in renewed fighting, according to the Defense Ministry.

A Norwegian-brokered 2002 cease-fire still officially holds, but is largely ignored by both sides.

The civil war has claimed about 68,000 lives, and displaced 1.6 million people.