A former Tamil legislator in Sri Lankan Parliament who was hospitalized with grievous gun shot injuries has passed away Tuesday morning, National Hospital officials here said.

Chandran Nehru who represented Sri Lankan Parliament from the eastern Batticaloa district between 2001 and 2004 was shot Monday night along with a top leader of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) at Welikanda in the eastern and northern province border.

The rival Karuna faction of the LTTE was blamed for the attack.

Koushalyan, the LTTE's eastern political leader, was killed on the spot and Nehru's convoy of vehicles was ambushed while they were returning from the LTTE held area of Kilinochchi in the northern province.

Hector Weerasinghe, director of the National Hospital in Colombo, said four others who were seriously injured in the shooting were undergoing emergency surgery.

Nehru and the injured others were rushed to the hospital in capital Colombo immediately after the shooting.

The pro-LTTE Tamilnet website had blamed "paramilitary operatives working with the Sri Lankan Armed Forces" for the killings.

Kousalyan was the most senior of the LTTE members to have died since the Tigers and the government entered the ongoing ceasefire in February 2002.

Karuna alias Vinayagamurthi Muralitharan broke ranks with the LTTE main stream group in March last year, triggering a series of internecine killings.

Although the government troops have denied repeated accusationsfrom the mainstream group of colluding with Karuna, the dispute has hampered efforts by the Norwegian peace facilitators to revivethe talks stalled in April 2003.

More than 64,000 people were killed in Sri Lanka's separatist war between mid 1980s and February 2002.