Sri Lanka president condemns bus bombing

Sri Lankan police investigators work at the site of a bus explosion as a worker assists police in sorting belongings of victims in Piliyandala, about 12 kilometers (7.5 miles) South of Colombo, Sri Lanka, Saturday, April 26, 2008. A suspected Tamil Tiger bomb hidden on the baggage rack of a packed rush-hour bus exploded in a fireball, killing 24 people at a bus station outside Sri Lanka's capital Friday. At least 40 people were wounded. (AP Photo/Eranga Jayawardena)

COLOMBO, Sri Lanka—Sri Lankan President Mahinda Rajapaksa said Saturday that a bomb that killed 26 bus passengers showed Tamil separatist rebels were resorting to desperate measures as they faced growing pressure on the battlefield in the north.

The blast tore through a bus filled with rush hour passengers Friday evening in the Colombo suburb of Piliyandala. The dead included a Buddhist monk and a 10-year-old child, the government said. Another 64 people were injured, the government said.

In a statement issued Saturday, Rajapaksa said the attack showed "the terrorists had once again resorted to killing innocent civilians in the face of heavy setbacks on the battlefield."

The government has stepped up attacks on the Tamil Tigers' de facto state in the north since pulling out of a long-ignored cease-fire in January, and claimed to have killed thousands of guerrilla fighters since then. The rebels deny those casualty figures and have managed to fend off numerous offensives.

In the most ferocious recent clash, scores of troops were killed and more than 100 were wounded in a battle along the front lines Wednesday that was widely considered a disaster for the military.

Fighting Friday in the Welioya, Mannar and Vavuniya fronts in the north killed 21 rebel fighters, the military said. Troops also won control of a Roman Catholic Church in Madhu on Friday after the rebels abandoned the area.

Rebel spokesman Rasiah Ilanthirayan did not respond to calls seeking comment.

Both sides routinely inflate enemy death tolls, while underreporting their own losses. Independent accounts of the fighting are rarely available because journalists are barred from the war zone.

The rebels have fought since 1983 to create an independent homeland for minority Tamils, who have been marginalized by successive governments controlled by Sri Lanka's Sinhalese majority. More than 70,000 people have been killed in the violence.

The Tamil Tigers have been accused of a carrying out a series of bombings and suicide attacks in recent years as the government pushed ahead with its plans to crush the rebels.

The bus attack Friday evening was the first major attack on civilians since a suicide bomber killed 14 people, including a government minister and a former Olympian, at the start of a marathon April 6.

The bomb Friday was hidden in a parcel on the baggage rack of the bus, the military said. It sent pieces of seats hurtling to the street, shattered windows of nearby buildings and nearly ripped the roof off the vehicle.

Ambulances with sirens wailing flooded to a nearby hospital, where off-duty doctors and nurses ran in to help the injured. One hospital was so overwhelmed it stopped accepting more wounded and diverted them to a second medical center.

Saranga Sadara, who was covered in blood from helping the wounded, said he was in a neighboring bus when the bomb exploded. "The whole place smelled of explosives, and debris was all over," he said.

The government blamed the rebels. The rebels, who routinely deny responsibility for such attacks, did not respond to calls for comment.