5 killed in Sri Lankan attack

COLOMBO, Sri Lanka - Five people were killed and 11 wounded when a suspected Tamil Tiger suicide bomber blew herself up in a police station in the Sri Lankan capital yesterday, shattering more than two years of relative peace.

Police said the woman detonated the bomb as she was being frisked, but the target was government minister Douglas Devananda, a Tamil who is a vocal opponent of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam rebels.

''A female has gone into the ministry of Douglas Devananda and wanted to meet him. . . . Permission was not granted. People from ministerial security followed her, and these officials took her into the police station. While they tried to search her she exploded herself," said police spokesman Rienzie Perera. ''It is obvious Douglas was the target."

The bomber was among the five dead, police said.

Peace talks to end Sri Lanka's decades-long civil war have been on hold for more than a year, but both sides have been observing a Norwegian-brokered truce signed in February 2002 that put an end to fighting that killed 64,000.

No one claimed responsibility and the Tigers offered no immediate comment on the blast, which happened on Colombo's main thoroughfare, near the prime minister's official residence and across the road from the US and British embassies.

But police and army officials said they believed the Tigers, who began fighting for a separate state for the island's minority Tamils in 1983, were responsible. Defense Secretary Cyril Herath said the army would continue to observe the truce.

The Tigers terrorized the capital with numerous suicide bomb attacks during the war.

While they have mostly respected the truce, human rights groups accuse them of targeting rival Tamil politicians, mostly in the island's east, where a split within the Tigers has complicated the peace bid.

Local media said since the split Devananda had been in contact with Karuna, the commander of the renegade rebel faction.

The Tigers also accused the army of helping Karuna and his renegades. The army repeatedly denied the Tigers' accusation, but a government spokesman said recently elements of the military had indeed helped Karuna.

Police said apart from the bomber, all four dead were police officers, including two women. Broken glass and blood covered the floor of the police station, which was under heavy guard.

Hector Weerasinghe, the director of Colombo's National Hospital, said 13 people had been brought in, of whom four had died. He said most of the wounded were police officers, and their conditions were not critical.

In Colombo, attention turned to the fate of the ceasefire, which has brought the island peace of mind, a rebounding economy, and a capital largely free of checkpoints and roadblocks. Monitors overseeing the truce and a Norwegian official said they had had no comment from the Tigers regarding the truce.

But the rebels have stepped up their rhetoric against the army in the past week, accusing it of helping the breakaway faction to foment violence in the east, where gun attacks killed one Tiger member and wounded three on Monday.

Analysts said the truce would likely hold, but the Tigers were clearly unhappy over the help for Karuna.

''I am worried to think what this might mean," said Janaka Dias, a 44-year-old shopkeeper. ''I want peace. And I don't know if the situation will worsen, and we will have war again."