By P.K. Balachandran, IANS
Colombo : Sri Lankan minister D.M. Dassanayake was killed Tuesday in a claymore mine blast near Colombo, the military said.
The minister’s motorcade was heading towards Colombo when it was struck by a claymore mine at the Rukmani Devi junction at Ja-Ela, 19 km from the capital, at 10.35 a.m., military spokesman Brig. Udaya Nanayakkara told IANS.
The roadside bomb had been set off by remote control.
“The LTTE (Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam) is responsible for the blast,” the spokesman said.
Dassanayake, a deputy minister for nation building in the Mahinda Rajapaksa government, and four others sustained severe injuries and were rushed to a local hospital. But efforts to revive the minister failed.
Six others were also admitted to the hospital with less serious injuries, the defence ministry said.
Ja-Ela is on the busy road linking Colombo with Sri Lanka’s only international airport 30 km away.
Political circles described Dassanayake as a “soft target”.
The attack followed the killing Sunday of the LTTE’s military intelligence chief, ‘Colonel’ Charles, by Sri Lankan commandos in the northwestern district of Mannar.
The attack on Dassanayake is the fourth bomb attack in Colombo and its surroundings in the last month and a half.
There was a suicide bomb attack targeting Tamil cabinet minister Douglas Devananda and a parcel bomb blast at Nugegoda, a southern suburb, in November.
This year, an army bus was blown up by a claymore mine at the busy Slave Island area of central Colombo.
On New Year Day, T. Maheswaran, a Tamil opposition MP, was shot dead at a Hindu temple in the capital. For this too, the government blamed the LTTE.