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COLOMBO: Suspected Tamil Tiger rebels rammed a truck loaded with explosives into a Sri Lankan convoy carrying navy sailors on Monday, killing at least 92 people and deepening pessimism over this month's planned peace talks.
The attack near the town of Habarana, about 190 km (120 miles) northeast of the capital Colombo, was one of the worst suicide bombings in the troubled Indian Ocean island.
It came at the start of a week of hectic international diplomacy aimed at ending a rash of fighting between the military and the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) ahead of planned peace talks in Geneva on October 28-29.
The dead were mostly navy sailors going home on vacation, but some civilians in the area were also killed, military officers at Colombo's media centre for national security said. More than 100 people were wounded.
“This inhuman act is clear revenge by the terrorists on the navy which inflicted successive defeats on the LTTE against their attempts to smuggle arms and explosives in the recent past,” the centre said in a statement.
Officers said the attack took place near a transit camp where the navy gathers its men heading to or returning from the eastern naval base of Trincomalee.
“There were about 15 buses and 13 were damaged in the explosion,” one navy officer in Colombo told Reuters.
The convoy had stopped near the town and many sailors had stepped out of their buses when the truck rammed into the vehicles, he said.
There were some small shops in the area and civilians were also caught in the blast, he said, adding that the toll could go up as bodies had been blown to bits and a count was still on.
The government of President Mahinda Rajapakse blamed the LTTE, who are fighting for an independent Tamil homeland.
“The attempt at instigating a backlash on the eve of the next round of peace negotiations clearly shows the evil designs of the LTTE to sabotage the internationally backed peace process,” a government statement said.
Tiger military spokesman Rasiah Ilanthiraiyan said he had to check with a regional commander if the LTTE was responsible.
But he said the bombing could be justified if it was indeed the rebels who had carried it out as government forces also launched attacks outside the war zone and on civilians.
Sri Lankan air force jets bombed a village near the northeastern town of Mullaithivu late on Monday and several civilians were feared killed, he added.
PEACE PROCESS
Monday's attack came as Yasushi Akashi, the peace envoy of the island's chief financial donor, Japan, began talks with government leaders to push a four-year peace process that has been battered by mounting violence.
Hundreds of people have been killed in spiralling violence in Sri Lanka since late July, and a truce brokered in 2002 now exists only on paper.
Last week, dozens of troops and rebels were killed and hundreds wounded in one of the deadliest battles since the truce.
On Sunday, the Sri Lankan navy shot and sunk a suspected rebel trawler off the country's northwestern coast, killing six suspected Tamil Tigers.
More than 65,000 people have been killed since 1983.
Diplomats said Monday's attack was a setback to the Geneva talks, about which hope was already low.
Complicating matters further was a ruling by the country's Supreme Court on Monday that the 1987 merger of the northern and eastern provinces, home to the country's Tamils, was unconstitutional and invalid.
The merger of the two provinces was an emotive demand of the Tamils but the hardline Marxist JVP party was opposed to it and had challenged it in court.
The unarmed Sri Lanka Monitoring Mission (SLMM), which oversees what is left of the 2002 truce, said it had yet to determine who was responsible for the suicide bombing.
“It's a serious and brutal attack,” said SLMM spokesman Thorfinnur Omarsson. “We hope it will not have difficult consequences for the peace talks. It is important the talks are not affected by this.”
