Tamil Tigers Kill 28 With Bus Bomb

More than 28 civilians were killed and dozens wounded when a roadside bomb blew up a crowded bus in southern Sri Lanka, as a six-year ceasefire between the government and Tamil Tiger rebels ran out.

After the blast gunmen shot passengers as they tried to flee, according to witnesses. "Everyone that got out through the doors, they shot and killed," Sampath, a 25-year-old passenger told Associated Press. "I jumped from the window and just escaped."

The attack, on a bus regularly used by schoolchildren, occurred in the remote town of Buttala about 150 miles southeast of Colombo.

The defense ministry said the bus was destroyed by a Claymore-style mine packed with explosives, nails and ball bearings - the signature bomb of the Tamil Tiger rebels.

"There are no other groups operating in the area," military spokesman Udaya Nanayakkara said.

A second bomb hit an army personnel carrier 12 miles south of the first attack, wounding three soldiers, the military said.

Local hospitals told news agencies that no children had been killed by the bus bomb. Witnesses described the scene as a bloodbath.

"I was on my way to take my one and a half month old baby to the doctor. I heard a loud noise and I thought it was a bomb, so I went under the seat of the bus with my baby and we heard firing for about five minutes," housewife TM Lalani, 27, told Reuters from Buttala hospital.

"Everybody was screaming and I saw people on the ground in a bloodbath," she said. "My leg got injured from pieces of glass. Luckily my baby has not got any injuries."

The bomb signals a new phase of fighting between security forces and the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam - separatists who are designated as a terrorist group by Britain, India and the US.

Although war has raged in the north and east for months, the Sri Lankan government's decision to end a formal truce has been criticized by international observers who say it will increase fighting and kill off peace prospects.

In the two weeks since the government said the truce was over, the military estimates more than 300 people have been killed in violence in the north, where the rebels are deeply entrenched. Independent verification is impossible in what has become a bitter battleground.

The Sri Lankan government has said the Tigers have simply used the ceasefire to rearm. Diplomats in Colombo have warned that neither side will back down in the coming weeks.

"Despite major donors and other countries asking for restraint, I don't see this government backing down. Neither will the LTTE," said an official from a western embassy. "Instead civilians are being targeted in the south, which is the Sinhalese heartland. This is the Tigers' way of pressurizing the government and pinning down troops away from the LTTE bases in the north."

Last week the American FBI highlighted the threat of the LTTE, which it said had inspired al-Qaida to adopt ever more ruthless tactics.

The FBI said the Tigers had perfected the use of suicide bombers, invented the suicide belt and pioneered the use of women in suicide attacks, as well as carrying out a campaign of assassinations. Some 4,000 people in the past two years alone had been murdered by the LTTE, said the FBI, and the rebels had also assassinated two world leaders - the only terrorist organization to have done so.

"Needless to say, the Tamil Tigers are among the most dangerous and deadly extremists in the world," the FBI said on its website.

The Tigers are demanding an independent state in the island's north and east, claiming that the island's three million Tamils, who are mainly Hindu, have suffered from racist pogroms under the majority Buddhist Sinhalese population. This is denied by the government in Colombo.

The resulting civil war has taken the lives of 70,000 Sri Lankans on both sides of the conflict since 1983. The latest bombings came a few hours before the end of the 2002 ceasefire agreement, which in practice has been long dead.