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A suspected Tamil Tiger suicide bomber blew up a bus in Sri Lanka's south coast resort area overnight (NZ time), killing herself and 10 passengers and wounding 50, police said of the second bus attack in as many days.
The blast near the coastal town of Peraliya, around 70km south of Colombo -- where around 1000 people were killed when their train was swept off its tracks by the 2004 tsunami -- comes after suspected rebels killed six civilians in a bus blast north of the capital on Friday.
Analysts fear rebel attacks, which have largely been confined to military and political targets during a new episode in the island's two-decade civil war, may now increasingly target civilians as in earlier stages of a conflict that has killed more than 67,000 people since 1983.
The blast blew a hole in the back of the bus, which sat on the verge of the island's main road along the south coast, amid tsunami-damaged homes and rudimentary shelters. Glass from the broken bus windows was strewn on the ground.
Eleven people were killed in the bombing and 50 others were wounded, officials said.
"We think it was a Tiger suicide bomber," Chief Inspector of Police HM Edrisuriya told Reuters. "We have found only a portion of an unidentified woman, who we think was the bomber."
The Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam, who say they are fighting for an independent state for minority Tamils in the north and east, denied they were behind the bus attacks.
"We have no connection with those incidents," Tiger military spokesman Rasiah Ilanthiraiyan said by telephone from the rebels' northern stronghold. "Civilian lives were lost, so naturally anyone would condemn these things."
The military dismisses rebel denials as routine and hollow, and analysts worry the attacks will escalate.
"The fact that they have now started targeting (civilians) is a cause for concern," said Iqbal Athas, an analyst for Jane's Defence Weekly. "One cannot rule out more attacks on civilians."
The attack came hours after four soldiers and a civilian were killed in a clutch of blasts in the island's restive north, and as police questioned 18 people over Friday's bus bombing 36km outside Colombo.
More than 3000 troops, civilians and rebel fighters were killed in a spree of ambushes, suicide bombings, air raids, naval clashes and land battles last year despite a 2002 ceasefire which now exists only on paper.
"Every government has given promises of finishing the war, but they are only promises and a dream for us. We are suffering," said 22-year-old R Rasika, who survived Friday's attack, but is still unable to hear or see properly.
"People in the north are suffering and being killed too," added the architecture student. "The government needs to find a peaceful solution. This country is not just for (majority) Sinhalese people. I think we need to find a practical power sharing system."
- REUTERS
