AT LEAST 70 people were feared killed and 200 injured after a bomb ripped through a packed commuter train in the Sri Lankan capital, Colomb yesterday, a senior government official said.
"I can confirm that 200 people have been injured, some battling for survival. The death toll is possibly higher than 70," said the official who was helping supervise rescue operations at the railway station at Dehiwala, an outlying suburb of Colombo.
The latest violence to wrack the country came as government troops recaptured the strategic army camp of Mullaitivu in the northeast from separatist Tamil Tiger rebels after some of the bloodiest fighting of their 13 year ethnic war.
Officials in the eastern naval base city of Trincomalee said that troops were combing the camp for possible booby traps planted by Tamil Tiger guerrillas who left the camp after seven days of intense battle.
"The troops are now within the perimeters of the camp," one official said. "It is stinking with corpses.
The Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) had earlier said they had taken complete control of the camp, a claim the army denied.
No one has claimed responsibility for the train blast but the Minister for Industrial Development, Mr C. V. Gooneratne, who rushed to the scene, blamed the LTTE.
"The LTTE are hitting us here because the security in the centre of Colombo is very tight," he said.
Tamil residents in the blast area were running for cover, fearing attacks by angry mobs of Sinhalese, who comprise the ethnic majority in this Indian island nation.
Security forces had braced for rebel attacks in Colombo as the LTTE observed the anniversary of July 23rd, 1983, the start of their struggle for a homeland for the Tamil minority in the north and east of the island.
Earlier yesterday, the Sri Lanka's Defence Ministry said more than 60 Tamil rebels were killed on Tuesday when government troops and aircraft attacked the army camp at Mullaitivu, 280 kms northeast of Colombo.
The LTTE in their account of the same battle, said 22 soldiers were killed by a rebel mortar bomb that scored a direct hit on an army landing craft ferrying soldiers to the war zone.
The LTTE says it had killed more than 1,200 government troops in the battle for the camp, which began last Thursday.
The LTTE yesterday accused Sri Lankan armed forces of bombarding civilian areas near the Mullaitivu camp. Senior army officials said the rebel claim was unfounded.
The latest fighting shattered government assertions that the Tamil Tigers are largely a spent force since the government captured their stronghold in Jaffna in April.