Sri Lanka Suicide Blast Kills 11
Eleven people were killed Wednesday when a suicide bomber threw herself at a vehicle carrying members of Sri Lanka's elite anti-terrorist force, the military and witnesses said.
About 20 others, most of them members of the anti-terrorist Special Task Force, were wounded in the attack in Vavuniya, 130 miles north of the capital, Colombo.
There was no immediate claim of responsibility, but police blamed the separatist Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam.
Last week, leading moderate Tamil politician Neelan Tiruchelvam was killed in a similar suicide bombing in Colombo. That attack was also blamed on the Tamil Tigers.
Thiruchelvam, of the Tamil United Liberation Fron, was the co-author of the government's devolution proposals aimed at ending the country's 16-year-old ethnic war, which the Tamil Tigers have been fighting in order to gain an independent homeland in the north and east of the island.
The rebels say minority Tamils are discriminated against by the Sinhalese majority. More than 58,000 people have died in the insurrection.
Vavuniya, a Tamil-majority city, is used by Sri Lankan armed forces to carry out military operations against rebels entrenched in the nearby jungles.
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