SRI LANKA:A SUSPECTED Tamil Tiger suicide bomber killed 27 people including a highly decorated former army general and seriously injured another 80 in northern Sri Lanka early yesterday morning.
The Sri Lankan military authorities claim the killing of retired Maj Gen Janaka Perera and his wife in the explosion inside the crowded opposition United National Party office in Anuradhapura to be a riposte by Tamil Tiger rebels under siege by the military poised to end 25 years of civil war that has claimed over 70,000 lives.
Military spokesman Brig Udaya Nanayakkara said Gen Perera was targeted because of his successes against the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) separatists during his years in service.
The former general turned diplomat and, more recently, opposition politician was a celebrated hero in Sri Lanka for having halted a major guerrilla advance in 2000 into the northern Jaffna peninsula, the cultural heartland of the country's minority Tamils.
Claiming decades of Tamil marginalisation by Sri Lanka's Sinhalese Buddhist majority, the LTTE launched a civil war in 1983 for a separate homeland in the north and east of the island; but after years of successes they had recently suffered a series of decisive military defeats.
Tamils comprise a fifth of the island's population of around 20 million.
The rebel-affiliated Tamilnet website reported that the suicide bomber had "embraced the former commander" before detonating his deadly package.
It accused Gen Perera of playing a major role in evicting Tamils from the area in the early 1980s to settle the majority Sinhalese population there.
The LTTE is possibly the world's most formidably organised guerrilla force with a dedicated Black Tiger suicide squad as well as a fledgling navy and air force.
Until the daily suicide attacks in Iraq overtook them, the Black Tigers held the record in their grim speciality with 390 hits and a success rate of 80 per cent that included a president, prime minister, defence minister and the country's army chief.
The suicide strike on Gen Parera occurred as fighter jets, helicopters and heavy artillery pounded the LTTE's administrative capital Kilinochchi, 212km north of the capital Colombo.
Military analysts said control of Kilinochchi would be decisive in determining the future of Sri Lanka's civil strife as the rebels would be driven out of territory they had long controlled, severely compromising their avowed goal of securing an independent homeland.