A suicide blast by a man on a bicycle killed four people in Sri Lanka's restive north on Thursday and air force jets bombed and destroyed a training base for Tamil Tiger rebel suicide bombers, the military said.
The explosion in northern Jaffna peninsula killed the suicide bomber and three civilians, military spokesman Brigadier Udaya Nanayakkara said. The bomb wounded 13 others, he said.
"It was a premature explosion. ... There was no target in the area," Nanayakkara said, blaming the separatist Tamil Tigers.
The rebels have a reputation for deploying suicide bombers against military targets and political opponents.
Hours later, the air force targeted a rebel base identified as an "indoctrination facility" for suicide bombers in Puthukudiyiruppu, in rebel-held Mullaithivu District, the defense ministry said on its Web site.
Rebel officials could not be reached for comment.
The violence comes one day after government troops overran at least 25 rebel bunkers on the northern front lines that separate the government-controlled Jaffna region and rebels' de-facto state in the north.
Soldiers attacked rebels with tanks, mortars and artillery, killing 10 guerrillas, according to the military.
There was no immediate comment from the Tamil rebels, who have been fighting since 1983 to create a separate state for ethnic minority Tamils.
Fighting has killed more than 70,000 people, more than 700 of them since the government announced it was quitting the ceasefire earlier this month, the military said.
Tamils, who have suffered decades of discrimination by majority Sinhalese-controlled governments, consider Jaffna their cultural heartland.
The military has controlled the region since 1995, but the rebels operate underground and carry out frequent attacks.
Jaffna is cut off from the rest of the island by Tamil rebel-held territory.
Government military forces have opened four fronts around the Tigers' de facto state in the north. The air force has targeted the group's leadership in a bid to crush the rebels' decades-old separatist war.
SPEAKING OUT: After Siranudh Scott’s allegations surfaced, celebrities and public figures took to social media to share their own experiences of sexual misconduct and abuse A high-profile alleged sexual abuse case within a wealthy Thai beer brewing family has prompted a wave of painful accounts from survivors of unconnected abuse in the conservative nation. Siranudh Scott, a member of the billionaire Thai family that founded the ubiquitous Singha beer brand, posted an emotional video this month accusing his elder brother Sunit of repeatedly abusing him when he was a teenager. Sunit, who is in his 30s, later denied the allegations in a video posted online, but Singha parent Boonrawd dismissed him from his executive role with the company on Tuesday last week. “I felt I needed to speak
A Hong Kong astronaut is to join a Chinese space mission for the first time as part of a three-person crew launching today, as Beijing edges closer to its goal of landing people on the moon. The Tiangong space station — crewed by teams of three astronauts that are typically rotated every six months — is the crown jewel of China’s space program, boosted by billions in state investment in a bid to catch up with the US and Russia. The Shenzhou-23 mission is to blast off at 11:08pm from the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center in northwestern China, carrying three astronauts to
UPGRADED ALERT: The risk inside DR Congo is now considered ‘very high,’ while neighboring countries face a ‘high’ threat as the outbreak continues, the WHO said Ebola is spreading faster than responders can track it in eastern Congo, where health workers managed to follow up with barely one in five identified contacts in a single day. Authorities in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DR Congo) reported 83 confirmed infections, 746 suspected cases and 1,603 identified contacts as of Thursday, but health workers were able to follow up on only 342 contacts that day — about 21 percent of the total under monitoring — data released by the DR Congo Ministry of Public Health on Friday showed. The figures suggest the response is falling behind the outbreak itself,
SEEKING ORDER: Rodrigo Paz said that ‘anyone who wants to destroy the nation will have to deal with this president and the full force of the constitution’ Bolivian President Rodrigo Paz on Wednesday said that the nation was at a “breaking point” after nearly a month of protests that have caused shortages of food, fuel and medicine. Paz, who took office six months ago amid the worst economic crisis there in four decades, is battling a groundswell of fury over his policies. The political capital, La Paz, has been besieged by low-income workers and members of the indigenous majority calling for his resignation. “The country needs order and is reaching breaking point,” the 58-year-old said at a public event in La Paz, renewing his appeal for dialogue. On Tuesday, the Bolivian
RSS