Lieutenant General Sarath Fonseka, Sri Lanka's Army Commander who was seriously hurt in a failed assassination bid by the Tamil Tigers returned to office Wednesday to resume work in the position, the defense ministry spokesman said.

Brigadier Prasad Samarasinghe told reporters that General Fonseka who was badly hurt in the suicide assassination attempt by the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) rebels on April 25 had fully recovered from the near fatal injuries he had received.

A woman suicide squad member of the LTTE jumped at Fonseka's motorcade and blew herself up as the Sri Lankan military commander was being driven to lunch inside the tightly guarded Army headquarters here.

At least 11 people were killed while 25 others including the Army Commander were injured in the blast.

Samarasinghe said Fonseka had returned to the island Tuesday afternoon having received urgent medical treatment in Singapore.

Fonseka, a battle hardened soldier was a key member of the island's military in the height of the separatist war with the LTTE rebels where more than 64,000 people have been killed since the conflict escalated in the mid 1980s.

The assassination bid on Fonseka and the subsequent killing of the Army's No 3 Maj Gen Parami Kulatunga late June in a similar suicide bomb explosion have seriously hurt the relations between the government and the rebels much to the detriment of the Norwegian backed effort to end the long drawn out separatist armed conflict.

Source: Xinhua