Tamils blamed for bus bombing

Press, 26 July 1986, Page 10

Tamils blamed for bus bombing

NZPA-AFP Colombo

Tamil separatists opposed to peace talks with the Government were responsible for a parcel bomb attack on a bus in northern Sri Lanka on Thursday, Government sources said yesterday.

Officials of the Joint Operation Command, the anti-guerrilla military headquarters in Colombo, reduced the toll in the blast to 12 dead and 28 injured.

The Government had said that 31 people were killed and 33 injured when a parcel-bomb exploded aboard a Govern-ment-owned bus travelling south from Vavuniya, in the north, to Anuradhapura. Military sources said that the initial miscount was because of the large number of mutilated bodies found at the scene, which had made even the identification of sex very difficult.

The bus was virtually reduced to scrap, the sources said. Government sources said yesterday that they believed the bomb had been planted by the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam, the main Tamil militant separatist group. The L.T.T.E. has also been blamed for detonating a land-mine on Tuesday under a bus in the north, killing 31 people and wounding about 25.

The attacks were believed to be in reaction to peace talks between Tamil representatives and the Government to solve the country’s ethnic crisis by giving greater autonomy to Tamil regions, Government sources said. A section of Sri Lanka’s 2.5 million Tamil minority have been waging a bloody campaign for greater autonomy in the north and east, complaining of discrimination by the Sinhalese majority.