Sri Lanka detains 3 in bomb blasts

Three people have been detained for questioning after bus bombs blamed on Tamil separatist rebels killed at least 21 people and wounded dozens more, Sri Lanka's Defense Ministry said Sunday. The insurgents have denied involvement.

The government meanwhile reaffirmed its commitment to the peace process and urged the rebels to resume negotiations.

Security forces said a Tamil rebel suicide bomber killed at least 15 people and wounded 40 more Saturday on a bus in the coastal town of Meetiyagoda, 95 kilometers (60 miles) south of the capital, Colombo, and near several popular resort towns.

It was not clear if the dead bomber was included in the official death toll. Police could not immediately be reached early Sunday.

Less than 24 hours earlier, a bus bomb also blamed on the Tamil Tigers killed at least six people just northeast of Colombo.

Police detained three people late Saturday in connection with the blast earlier that day, an official at the Defense Ministry's Media Center for National Security said Sunday. The officer, who cannot be named due to military policy, had no other details.

The rebels, formally known as the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam, have been fighting for decades for an independent homeland for the Tamil ethnic minority in Sri Lanka's north and east, because of discrimination at the hands of the majority-Sinhalese government.

As a major foreign donor called for an end to the escalating violence that killed more than 3,600 in 2006, Sri Lanka's government urged a return to peace talks.

"The government reaffirms its total commitment to a peaceful settlement for the north and east," it said in statement released late Saturday.

"The government appeals to the international community to condemn such acts of terror and prevail on the LTTE to renounce violence and return to the negotiating table," it said.

Cowardly acts of terrorism'

Japan also called for change in a statement e-mailed to news organizations.

"These attacks, which deliberately targeted innocent common people, must be condemned as cowardly acts of terrorism, and such incidents must not be repeated in future," the Japanese Embassy said in a statement.

Police said Saturday's blast was triggered by a female Tamil rebel.

"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 senior police official Upul Ariyaratne.

Violence has risen sharply in Sri Lanka over the past year, but most has occurred in the ethnic Tamil-dominated north and east, where the rebels run their own de facto state in some areas. The latest bloodshed appeared to signal an escalation of the ethnic conflict ravaging the South Asian island nation.

"The LTTE are losing their strength in the east. Because of this, they are targeting innocent civilians," said military spokesman Brig. Prasad Samarasinghe.

The rebels have made suicide bombings a hallmark of their two-decade campaign to carve out a separate state for minority Tamils.

Yet the rebels said they were not involved.

"We totally deny that. We did not do that, that's all I can say," the rebels' military spokesman, Rasiah Ilanthirayan, told The Associated Press by telephone from the group's northern stronghold, Kilinochchi.

On Wednesday, the rebels warned the government of "serious repercussions" for a government airstrike they said killed 16 Tamil civilians, including eight children, in a Tiger-controlled northwestern area. The military said it targeted only rebel positions in the raid Tuesday.

The renewed fighting has seriously threatened a 2002 cease-fire between the rebels and the government, although the truce still officially holds.

The civil war has claimed about 68,000 lives, and displaced 1.6 million people.

Source: http://www.cnn.com/2007/WORLD/asiapcf/01/07/srilanka.blasts.ap/index.html