Colombo: A bomb tore through a passenger bus in southern Sri Lanka yesterday, killing at least 15 people and wounding dozens more, police said, in the second bomb blast to hit the country in as many days.
Police said they believe a Tamil Tiger suicide bomber triggered the blast in Meetiyagoda, some 95 kilometres south of the capital, Colombo.
"There is a female body inside the bus and looking at the damage the blast has caused around her, we suspect that she could have been a suicide bomber," said Upul Ariyaratne, a senior police official.
Tamil Tiger separatists are renowned for using suicide bombers in their more than two-decade bloody campaign to carve out a separate state for ethnic minority Tamils in the country's northeast. A spokesman for the rebels, however, denied any involvement.
Ariyaratne said there were about 65 passengers inside the bus at the time of the blast and about 40 had been admitted to hospital.
Yesterday's blast came a day after six people died in a similar bus blast on a busy highway in Nittambuwa town, 40 kilometres northeast of Colombo. Thirty passengers were also wounded in the blast that the military linked to Tamil Tiger rebels.
The insurgents, however, rejected the military's accusations that they carried out both bus bombings.
The government's military spokesman, Brig Prasad Samarasinghe, said 10 people had been detained for questioning over Friday's bus blast. No formal charges have been lodged, but they are still being questioned, he said.
The bus explosions came days after the rebels warned the government of "serious repercussions" for an air raid they said killed 16 ethnic Tamil civilians, including eight children, in northwestern Mannar district. The military said it targeted only rebel positions in Tuesday's airstrike.
In other violence, three separate roadside bomb blasts blamed on the insurgents killed four soldiers and a civilian in the north.
