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COLOMBO : A suspected Tamil Tiger suicide bomber blew himself up on Friday injuring seven people as police tried to search his house in the heavily-guarded Sri Lankan capital, officials said.
The blast went off when police approached the house in Colombo's commercial district of Kotahena, adjoining the port of Colombo, a police official said, adding that the blast was heard across the city of 650,000 people.
In a massive search carried out shortly afterwards, police recovered six powerful Claymore mines, the type commonly used by Tamil Tiger rebels, from a house in the same area of the capital, the defence ministry said.
Two policemen and a female officer were among the seven admitted to the Colombo National Hospital after the Friday morning blast, spokesman Anil Jasinha said. "Some of them have burn injuries," he said.
Police said the bomber was blown to pieces making identification difficult.
"We had information from a man we arrested the previous day about a possible arms storage location of the Tigers and we moved in this morning to check," a policeman at the scene said.
Police and troops poured into the area to search for further explosives caches and other suspected Tiger rebels, military officials said.
"The man we were looking for came out of a house while the search operation was underway and detonated explosives he was carrying," military spokesman Udaya Nanayakkara said.
Police said the bomber was believed to be a member of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) and may have planned to carry out the attack somewhere else.
Police had also found bombs and ammunition buried in a coastal area outside the capital on Thursday following the arrest of another suspected Tiger rebel, the ministry said.
Authorities had stepped up security in Colombo after Tamil guerrillas accused the army of carrying out two roadside bomb attacks inside rebel-held territory on Wednesday, killing eight civilians.
The attack came as the defence ministry said 26 more Tiger rebels had been killed in fresh fighting in the north of the island on Thursday.
The military had also stepped up air attacks against the rebels.
According to the defence ministry, 1,688 rebels have been killed so far this year which has seen the end of a truce and escalating violence.
The military estimates the Tigers' strength at 5,000 combatants.
The ministry says 94 soldiers and police have also been killed in 2008.
Casualty figures provided by both sides differ vastly and cannot be independently verified since the government bars journalists and human rights workers from front line and rebel-held areas. - AFP/ms
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