Bus Blasts Kill 21 People in Sri Lanka

COLOMBO, Sri Lanka – Separate explosions inside two passenger buses killed 21 people, authorities said Saturday. Officials blamed the Tamil Tiger rebels, but the group denied any involvement.

Fifteen people died and dozens were wounded after a bomb tore through a bus in Meetiyagoda on Saturday, some 60 miles south of the capital. Police said the blast could have been triggered by a suicide bomber, a hallmark of the Tamil Tiger rebels.

“There is a female body inside the bus and looking at the damage the blast has caused around her, we suspect that she could have been a suicide bomber,” said Upul Ariyaratne, a senior police official.

He said there were about 65 passengers inside the bus at the time of the blast and about 40 had been admitted to hospital.

A Tamil Tiger official said the group wasn’t involved in the attacks.

“We totally deny that. We did not do that, that’s all I can say,” Rasiah Ilanthirayan, the rebels’ military spokesman, told The Associated Press by telephone from the rebel stronghold Kilinochchi.

A similar blast Friday evening killed six other passengers on a busy highway in Nittambuwa, 25 miles northeast of Colombo.

A Norwegian-brokered 2002 cease-fire between the rebels and the government has come under serious threat as more than 3,600 fighters and civilians were killed in renewed fighting in 2006. The cease-fire still officially holds.

Before the cease-fire, the conflict claimed the lives of about 65,000 people and displaced another 1.6 million.