SL says rebels blow up electricity transformer

Colombo, Jan 8: Suspected Tamil Tiger rebels blew up an electricity transformer 6 miles north of the capital today, the military said, disrupting power supplies and damaging 10 homes but causing no casualties.

Police have arrested two people for questioning over the incident, one of them a guard at the power substation. The blast comes after two deadly suspected Tiger bomb attacks on passenger buses last week killed 17 civilians and injured over 100.

''Definitiely this was done by the Tamil Tigers. Who else could do this?'' said a spokesman for the Media Centre for National Security. ''One of them has infiltrated into the substation, past a guard point.'' There were no immediate details on how many homes were affected by the disruption to electricity supplies in and around the town of Wattala, which lies on the main road between Colombo and the island's only international airport.

More than 3,000 troops, civilians and rebel fighters were killed in a spree of ambushes, suicide bombings, air raids, naval clashes and land battles last year despite a 2002 ceasefire which now exists only on paper.

Analysts fear that rebel attacks, largely confined to military and political targets during this new phase in the two-decade civil war, may now increasingly focus on civilian targets as in earlier stages of a conflict that has killed more than 67,000 people since 1983.

REUTERS

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