Colombo: A suicide bomber on a motorcycle blew himself up next to a car carrying a top Sri Lankan general on Monday, killing the military officer and three other people, officials said.
Authorities quickly blamed the Tamil Tiger rebels for the blast. ''This is the work of the LTTE,'' said military spokesman Brig. Prasad Samarasinghe, using the initials of the insurgents' formal name, the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE).
Four months of violence have brought Sri Lanka dangerously close to the brink of resuming full-scale civil war, and Monday's attack came just over two months after the Tigers' tried to kill Sri Lanka's top military commander in a suicide bombing in Colombo.
The car carrying Maj. General Parami Kulatunga, the third-highest-ranking officer in Sri Lanka's military, was hit Monday by a suicide bomber on a motorcycle, Samarasinghe said.
The general was heading to work in Colombo.
Kulatunga survived the initial blast but died on the way to the city's National Hospital, Samarasinghe said.
The blast also killed the general's driver, a security guard and a civilian passer-by, the military said.
Earlier reports had indicated there were causalities on a passing bus, but it appeared the vehicle sustained only minor damages and that its passengers were unharmed.
Discrimination against Sri Lanka's 3.2 million Tamils led the Tigers to take up arms in 1983.
The resulting war on this tropical island of 19 million people - nearly three-quarters of them Buddhist Sinhalese - left more than 65,000 people dead before a 2002 cease-fire.
But talks to build on the truce soon faltered and in the past year, sporadic shootings and bombings have escalated into near-daily violence.
Almost 700 people, more than half of them civilians, have been killed since April.
Throughout the conflict, the Tamil Tigers have used suicide bombers to target Sri Lanka's military and political elite.
In April, a woman disguised to look pregnant blew herself up in front of a car carrying Sri Lanka's highest-ranking general, Lt. General Sarath Fonseka.
Eight people were killed and the general wounded.
Kulatunga, the general killed Monday, was a hardened combat veteran who had led numerous operations against the rebels in the Sri Lanka's northeast, the main theater of fighting during nearly two decades of full-scale war.
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