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Air strikes after suicide bomber kills 12 police in Sri Lanka
2008-06-16
COLOMBO (AFP) - A Tamil Tiger suicide bomber on a motorcycle blew himself up outside a police compound in northern Sri Lanka on Monday, killing at least 12 police and wounding 40 other people, officials said. The powerful blast occurred during the morning rush hour directly in front of a police building in the tightly-guarded town of Vavuniya, 258 kilometres (160 miles) north of the capital Colombo, the defence ministry said. The wounded, some of them schoolchildren, were rushed to the main hospital, doctors said. "It was a Tiger suicide bomber who rammed his (explosives-packed) motorcycle as policemen were leaving for duty," military spokesman Udaya Nanayakkara said. "All those killed in the attack were police personnel," police spokesman Ranjith Gunasekara said, identifying the victims as nine policemen and three female constables. Sri Lanka's military retaliated with a string of air attacks on rebel targets inside guerrilla held-territory north of Vavuniya, defence sources said. They said jet aircraft bombed a store house of the Tamil Tigers in Mullaitivu district while Mi-24 helicopter gunships attacked Tiger bunkers in the northern peninsula of Jaffna. There were no immediate reports of casualties in the air attacks and there was also no immediate reaction from the guerrillas. However, the rebels said that two civilians were killed and 11 more wounded in an air strike on Sunday. Vavuniya is a de facto frontier town bordering territory further north held by the rebels, who are fighting for a separate Tamil homeland in the majority Sinhalese island. The drawn-out conflict has claimed tens of thousands of lives. The latest attack came as the defence ministry reported that 47 rebels and eight security personnel were killed in weekend battles in the north. The latest deaths raise the number of rebels killed by security forces to 4,269 since January, according to the defence ministry, which says 386 security personnel and police have died in combat during the same period. The government insists it now has the upper hand in the 36-year-old conflict with the Tigers, and has poured a record 1.5 billion dollars into the war effort this year. In the island's eastern district of Batticaloa, suspected Tiger gunmen shot dead two police constables while a trooper from the paramilitary home guard unit was shot dead elsewhere in the region on Sunday, the ministry said. It said troops also killed four more Tiger rebels in a fresh confrontation in the north on Sunday.
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