Fighting feared after bus blasts

Press, 13 June 1986, Page 6

Fighting feared after bus blasts

NZPA-Reuter Colombo Troops took up positions in Trincomalee, eastern Sir Lanka,- yesterday, to prevent communal violence after two buses were blown up on Wednesday, killing 22, including a policeman and a Buddhist monk. A few hours later in Colombo, one person was killed and about 30 injured in a cinema blast.

Truck-loads of soldiers swept Trincomalee and 'guards maintained an allnight vigil at the hospital where many of the injured and eight unidentified bodies were taken.

Seventy people were wounded by the bombs which reduced the buses to heaps of mangled metal and charred seats.

A policeman, Sarath Perera, said he saw two women thrown from the rear of one bus as it exploded just after it left the main bus station. Both were dead. “A third woman was embracing a child and screaming for help and writhing in agony. I grabbed the child and pulled her to safety,” he said. "A second bus then stopped outside and minutes later there was an explosion,” he said, adding that .he helped rush the injured to hospital. Military officials said one bomb was wrapped in a parcel and placed near the driver by an unidentified Tamil.

Navy divers recovered two bodies blown into a lagoon. A curfew imposed after the blast was lifted yesterday morning.