Nine arrested in connection with bus bombing

Nine suspects have been arrested in a bus bombing that killed 26 passengers outside Sri Lanka's capital, Colombo, police said today as air force jets pounded positions of the Tamil rebels blamed for the attack.

Police spokesman N.K. Ilangakoon said the nine suspects are being questioned following the blast. He did not give more details.

Sri Lankan President Mahinda Rajapaksa said that the blast showed Tamil Tiger separatist rebels were resorting to desperate measures as they faced growing pressure on the battlefield in the north.

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

Friday evening's blast tore through a bus filled with rush hour passengers in Piliyandala, a suburb of Colombo. Among those killed in the bombing were a Buddhist monk and a 10-year-old child, the government said. Another 64 people were injured.

Meanwhile, the military said that it fears more rebel attacks against civilians as the northern war front heats up and that it will introduce advanced security measures.

"They (the rebels) will resort to these kind of attacks when they are losing, but we can't say what place they will target next," military spokesman Brigadier Udaya Nanayakkara said. "We will try to prevent them, though it's not possible to stop 100%."

Today air force fighter jets pounded a rebel artillery position in the northern Welioya region, the military said in a statement.

Pilots confirmed that the raid was "successful" the statement said without giving further details.

The government has stepped up attacks on the Tamil Tigers' de facto state in the north since pulling out of a long-ignored ceasefire in January.

It claims 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 along the front lines Wednesday in a battle that was widely considered a disaster for the military.

Both sides routinely inflate enemy death tolls and underreport their own. 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 ethnic Tamils, who have been marginalised by successive governments controlled by Sri Lanka's Sinhalese majority. More than 70,000 people have been killed in the violence.

The bus bombing 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 on April 6.

The bomb on 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.

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