A Sri Lankan suicide bomber killed 23 people at a historic tourist town on Monday, including a retired army general who was an opposition party provincial leader.
The blast, immediately blamed on the rebel Tamil Tigers, also injured at least 80 people, the military said.
The bomber struck during the opening of a new office for the opposition United National Party (UNP) in the north central town of Anuradhapura, 200km north of the capital Colombo, attended by retired Major-General Janaka Perera.
”A suicide bomber went inside and exploded. My senior officer there said 22 people were killed, and among the dead were Janaka Perera and his wife,” said Deputy Inspector General KPP Pathirana. The toll was later raised to 23.
Last month Perera unsuccessfully ran to be North Central Province’s chief minister, a powerful local position.
The military said the blast was the latest carried out by the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE), who are credited with perfecting suicide bombing during a 25-year war to establish a separate homeland for the country’s Tamil minority.
”It was an LTTE suicide attack,” military spokesperson Brigadier Udaya Nanayakkara said, who added the general was targeted because ”he fought against the LTTE, and also to create backlash in the south”.
Anuradhapura is huge tourist draw and home to some of Sri Lankan Buddhism’s holiest sites. For a millennium it was the seat of the kingdom of the Sinhalese, who make up 75% of the Indian Ocean island’s 21-million people.
It has many ancient ruins, but also major military operations to supply the war zone further north.
Every government since independence from Britain in 1948 has been led by the Sinhalese, and Tamils for years have complained of marginalisation and broken promises, which helped spark the LTTE-led war in 1983.
The LTTE, among the world’s most resilient and ruthless insurgencies, has been blamed for killing many politicians including rival Tamils over the years.
Assassinations blamed on LTTE suicide bombers include those of former Indian Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi in 1991 and former Sri Lankan President Ranasinghe Premadasa in 1993. President Chandrika Kumaratunga lost an eye in a 1999 blast, but lived.
The rebels could not be reached for comment, but have rarely claimed responsibility for such bombings.
The military is on the edge of the Tigers’ headquarters town of Kilinochchi, a strategic and symbolic prize in an intensifying war in which the government is growing increasingly confident of a conventional victory.
That has raised fears that the rebels will increase their bombing campaign in Colombo and elsewhere in response to losing the turf they have held and ruled as a de facto state in the island’s north. – Reuters