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Suicide bomber strikes Lankan party office

27 killed

AP, AFP, Colombo
A suspected rebel suicide bomber blew himself up yesterday inside a crowded opposition party office in northern Sri Lanka, killing a former army general and 26 others.
Retired Maj. Gen. Janaka Perera and his wife were among the 27 dead and at least 80 more were wounded in the bomb attack at the United National Party office In Anuradhapura town, military
spokesman Brig. Udaya Nanayakkara said.
The blast came as government troops and Tamil Tiger fighters battled for control of the rebels' administrative capital in the northern town of Kilinochchi.
The suicide bomber was a Tamil Tiger rebel who apparently targeted Perera because of his successes against the separatist cause durihg his years in the fnilitary, Nanayakkara said.
The Tamil Tigers began fighting in 1983 to create an independent homeland for the country's ethnic minority Tamils who have faced years of discrimination at the hands of governments controlled by majority ethnic Sinhalese. More than 70,000 people have been killed in the violence.
The attack occurred at about 8:45 a.m. Monday as officials from the United National Party gathered
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to open a new office.
Wearing a hidden explosives vest, the assailant "embraced the former commander" before detonating, the rebel-affiliated TamilNet Web site reported, noting that Perera played a key role in evicting Tamils from northeastern villages in 1984 to settle ethnic Sinhalese there.
Perera was lauded as a war hero in Sri Lanka for his repeated confrontations with the rebels and his role in halting a major guerrilla advance in 2000 into the Jaflha peninsula, the cultural heartland of the country's minority Tamils.
But he was also, a critic of the government ol I’T^dentMjfflinda Rajapaksa and became a leader in recent months of the opposition United National Party. In August the retired officer won a seat in the northcentral provincial assembly.
The United National Party, meanwhile, accused the government of ignoring repeated requests for a stronger security detail for Perera an open critic of the way Colombo has conducted its military campaign against the rebels.
"The government must take full responsibility. They did not give him adequate security for political reasons," party official Tissa Attanayake said, without elaborating.
Just hours before the attack, a roadside bomb killed two civilians and wounded another in a village near Anuradhapura.
Rebel officials could not be reached for comment on either attack because communication Lines have been cut to guerrilla-dominated areas in the north.
Meanwhile, a former leader of Sri Lanka's Tamil Tiger rebels is due to enter parliament on the government benches, an official announcement showed Monday.
Vinayagamoorthy Muralitharan, also known as Colonel Karuna, will be sworn in on Tuesday to the 225-member parliament to fill the vacancy of a lawmaker who quit recently to contest local polls, the gazette notification said.
Karuna, who led an unprecedented split in theTamil Tiger movement in 2004, returned from Britain in July this year, after serving a brief jail term on immigration charges.
He became an embarrassment for Colombo after he alleged that he was given a false diplomatic passport by Sri Lankan authorities td travel to London.