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| Sri Lanka |
| Sri Lankan minister survives suicide attack |
| 2007-11-29 |
| A disabled Tamil Tiger suicide bomber with explosives hidden in her bra blew herself up outside the office of a Tamil minister Wednesday, killing his secretary, the Sri Lankan military said. Two men from the minister’s security staff were also wounded in the blast, one seriously, Colombo national hospital spokeswoman Pushpa Soysa told AFP. Officials said they believed that the attack was the work of the Tamil Tigers and aimed at Social Welfare Minister Douglas Devananda, who has survived at least four previous attempts on his life. “At 8:05 am today (an) LTTE handicapped female suicide cadre exploded herself at the office of minister Douglas Devananda,” in the heart of the Sri Lanka capital, the defence ministry said in a statement. Devananda, a vocal opponent of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE), once fought alongside the guerrillas before turning to politics in the 1980s. The minister, leader of the Eelam People’s Democratic Party (EPDP) - a key ally in President Mahinda Rajapaksa’s ruling coalition - escaped unhurt, a party spokesman said. “The minister generally meets the public on Wednesdays to look into their grievances. The woman blew herself up when the minister’s security personnel carried out a routine body check on her,” the EPDP spokesman said. Police investigators at the scene said the Tamil suicide bomber was disabled with polio and appeared to have wired her bra to explode when it was tampered with. She also died in the blast. Tiger suicide bombers usually don jackets with a manual detonating device around waist level, police said. Devananda survived a similar “bra bomb” attack in 2004. Attack of the FemBots! Wednesday’s attack came one day after Tiger leader Velupillai Prabhakaran declared that Sri Lankan peace efforts were a waste of time and vowed to strike back at the island’s “genocidal” government. “Those who plan to destroy the Tamil nation will in the end be forced to face their own destruction,” he said delivering his annual policy speech from a jungle hideout in his northern fiefdom. A reclusive leader, Prabhakaran launched a furious assault on the island’s Sinhalese majority accusing “The Sinhala nation” of “trying to destroy the Tamil nation.” “It is unleashing unthinkable violence against another people. It only desires to find a solution to the Tamil question through military might and oppression,” he said. On Monday the island’s defence secretary, Gotabhaya Rajapakse, told AFP that his forces were now going all out to kill Prabhakaran and recapture the north of the country. The government has this year wrested control of the east from the LTTE, sunk several LTTE gun-running ships and earlier this month killed the LTTE’s political chief in an air raid. |
| Posted by:Fred |