SRI LANKA: Two bomb attacks on buses in Colombo and Polgolla kill at least 22 people

Record ID: 352588

  • Title: SRI LANKA: Two bomb attacks on buses in Colombo and Polgolla kill at least 22 people
  • Date: 7th June 2008
  • Summary: DOCTORS AND NURSES ATTENDING TO INJURED INJURED WOMAN BEING TREATED INJURED MAN LYING ON HOSPITAL BED
  • Embargoed: 22nd June 2008 13:00
  • Keywords:
  • Location: Sri Lanka
  • Country: Sri Lanka
  • Topics: Crime / Law Enforcement,Domestic Politics
  • Reuters ID: LVA3XWMASZ49OCOD6HX2Q56QEKKO
  • Story Text: Two bomb attacks on buses in Sri Lanka kill at least 22 people, security officials say, the latest in a series of assaults by suspected Tamil Tiger rebels on the country's transport system.
    Two bomb attacks on buses in Sri Lanka killed at least 22 people on Friday (June 6), security officials said, the latest in a series of assaults by suspected Tamil Tiger rebels on the country's transport system.
    In the first attack, 20 people were killed and 64 wounded when a roadside bomb exploded during morning rush hour near a crowded bus in the capital Colombo, the military said.
    An official of the police bomb disposal unit said the bomb was planted on the road side, hidden in the bushes and exploded using a remote control.
    A Reuters witness said the bus was shredded by shrapnel and the floor was covered in blood and debris.

    "I was riding my bicycle to work when I heard a loud explosion about two hundred metres behind me. My hands went numb. I went about another 100 metres and looked back and I saw the bus. It had stopped. I ran towards it. There were three people on the road, bleeding. I picked them up with the help of some others and put them in passing vehicles to take them to hospital," another eye witness, Suranjith Alahakoon described.
    Later on Friday, an explosion hit a bus in the central town of Polgolla, killing at least two and wounding 20 others, police said.
    The government blamed the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) for the blast in Colombo, as well as other attacks on urban areas that have increased since the military began a new push against rebel territory in the north and east.
    Friday's blasts come two days after the military blamed rebels for a bomb attack on a railway track that wounded 27 civilians in Colombo.
    The rebels, who are fighting for an independent state in the north and east, were not immediately available for comment but usually deny involvement in such attacks.
    More than 70,000 people have been killed since civil war erupted in 1983.
    The military said fresh fighting in the northern districts of Jaffna, Vavuniya, Polonnaruwa and Mannar on Thursday killed 17 rebels and five soldiers.
    The rebels said in an emailed statement that two civilians travelling in a tractor in rebel-held Mullaithivu were killed on Thursday by a military claymore fragmentation mine.
    Fighting between the military and the LTTE has intensified since the government formally pulled out of a six-year-old ceasefire pact in January, though a renewed civil war has been raging since 2006.
    Analysts say the military has the upper hand in the latest phase of fighting given its superior air power, strength of numbers and swathes of terrain captured in the island's east.
    But they still see no clear winner on the horizon.
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