9 Die in Sri Lanka Suicide Blast After Charles’ Visit
A suicide bomber blew herself up in downtown Colombo on Friday just hours after Prince Charles ended a visit to the Indian Ocean island nation. The blast killed eight others and wounded five.
There was no indication that the attack was aimed at Prince Charles, who had used his four-day visit to appeal for an end to Sri Lanka’s ethnic violence.
The bomber, believed by authorities to be a rebel with the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam, struck six hours after Charles left. She detonated explosives concealed in her handbag when she was stopped at a checkpoint 300 yards from the gates of Sri Lanka’s air force headquarters, said B.D.M.T. Dissanayake, Colombo’s deputy inspector general of police.
The attack killed three air force guards and two army soldiers, as well as the woman and her three companions.
The Tigers are fighting for a homeland for the nation’s Tamil minority. The war has killed more than 50,000 people in the past 15 years.
The same group was blamed for the Jan. 25 bombing at the nation’s holiest Buddhist temple, said to contain a tooth of Buddha.
That bombing forced the government to shift a celebration of Sri Lanka’s 50 years of independence from the temple in the eastern city of Kandy to the more secure parliament complex on Colombo’s outskirts.
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