Sri Lanka's Prime Minister escaped assassination yesterday after his guards intercepted a suicide bomber who blew himself up and killed three other people in the capital Colombo, officials said.
Plain-clothed police deployed to protect Mr Ratnasiri Wickremanayake were about to search the suicide bomber when he detonated explosives strapped to his body, a police official said.
Mr Wickremanayake, who is also acting for President Chandrika Kumaratunga while he is in London to support the international campaign against terrorism, was on his way to attending a ceremony at a nearby venue when the blast went off.
Police had cornered the bomber at Colombo's Chitra Lane and he set off the device to avoid being captured alive, officials said. At least 18 people were wounded in the blast and eight vehicles were destroyed.
"He (The bomber) was roaming the area and aroused the suspicion of plain-clothed men deployed as security for the PM," a police official said.
"As we got reinforcements and tried to question him, he detonated the explosives." Doctors at Colombo's main hospital said eight of the wounded were in a critical condition. The wounded included a schoolgirl.
The Prime Minister's spokesman, Mr Seelaratne Senarath, said the premier was unnerved by the blast but went ahead with the official ceremony a short distance away from where the blast occurred. There was no claim of responsibility for the attack, but state radio said the separatist Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) had tried to assassinate the Prime Minister.
The radio said the attack was aimed at disrupting the ruling party's campaign for December 5th snap parliamentary elections.
Ruling party politicians are given extensive security against suicide bomb attacks which are the trademark of Tamil Tiger rebels fighting for an independent homeland in the island's north-east.
The run-up to last year's elections saw more than 2,000 poll-related violent incidents in which at least 65 people were killed. Most of the victims died in two suicide bomb attacks at ruling party rallies.
The blast was the first suicide attack in the capital in a year.
An identical incident took place in October last year when a man set off explosives wounding 19 people as he was about to be searched at Colombo's Town Hall.
The bombing also came three days before the West Indies team was due to arrive here for a cricket series test match with the home team as well as a One-Day International series that will include Zimbabwe.
The West Indies boycotted their World Cup matches in Sri Lanka in 1996 after a suicide truck bomb against the Central Bank killed 91 people and wounded over 1,400.