Four soldiers killed in Sri Lanka rebel bomb attacks

At least four soldiers and a civilian were killed in a series of claymore mine bomb blasts blamed on the Tamil Tiger rebels, defense officials said Saturday.

The Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) rebels detonated two explosions on the Army in the northern Jaffna peninsula Saturday morning.

In the first at 8:30 a.m. local time (0300 GMT) at Nallur area in Jaffna the Army road patrol survived the explosion but two civilians were injured.

In the second in Jaffna at Uduvil around 9 a.m. local time, a soldier was killed when the mine exploded on a group of soldiers providing security to a food depot, officials said.

The third mine explosion was in Vavuniya in the northern province which hit a lorry carrying four soldiers going on leave, police said.

Three soldiers and the civilian lorry driver died in the blast. The violence is the continuation of upsurge since December of 2005, in which around 3,800 people died.

Meanwhile the security officials said the death toll in Friday night's bus bomb explosion had risen to 6. The police at Nittambuwa the site of the explosion said that a police curfew imposed overnight immediately after the blast was lifted on Saturday morning.

Officials said the bomb weighing 2 kg had been fixed to a seat in the privately owned passenger bus carrying some 80 passengers between Nittambuwa, 36 km north west of Colombo, and Giriulla, a rural outback in the north western province. The police said at least 20 people had been quizzed on the blast.

Source: Xinhua