Suicide bomber kills four police

A TAMIL TIGER suicide bomber detonated explosives at a police station yesterday, killing herself and four officers in the first such attack in the Sri Lankan capital since the rebels signed a ceasefire two years ago, police said.

Seven people were wounded in the blast, which happened across the street from the US and British embassies.

Police said they took the woman in for questioning after learning that she was plotting an attack on Douglas Devananda, an agriculture minister and moderate Tamil leader who opposes the rebels.

At the station, officers noticed something “bulging out of her dress” and called the bomb squad, said police spokesman Rienzie Perera, but the woman detonated the explosives wrapped around her body before they arrived.

Four police officers took the full force of the blast and died, Perera said. Seven people, including three civilians, were wounded.

The Kollupitiya Police Station is in a high security area on Colombo’s main thoroughfare, Galle Road.

But police believe the bomber’s target was Devananda, Perera said.

Authorities stopped the woman as she was trying to get inside his office, he said.

Devananda was not there at the time, but the woman “apparently asked some people when he was expected”, Perera said.

The rebels made no comment on the attack, which threatens the 2002 truce between the Liberation Tigers of Tamileelam and the Sri Lankan government.