At least two people have been killed and around 20 people injured in a second suspected bomb attack on a bus in Sri Lanka, according to police.
The explosion near the central Sri Lankan town of Kandy on Friday came just hours after a bomb killed at least 21 people on a bus outside the capital Colombo.
"The LTTE [Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam] carried out the attack exploding a bomb inside a passenger bus," Brigadier Udaya Nanayakkara, Sri Lanka's military spokesman, said.
He later told Al Jazeera the military has launched operations in the north of the country, where the LTTE has bases.
He blamed the attack in Moratuwa on the LTTE, which has fought the Sri Lankan government for two decades in an attempt to secure a homeland for ethnic minority Tamils in the north and east of the island.
ShrapnelThe explosion shattered the windows of the bus and peppered it with shrapnel. A 45-year old man who identified himself only as Nalaka said he was thrown from his motorcycle by the explosion.
| "When I got up I saw the bus and quickly got into it. Some people lay dead. Some others were bleeding" Nalaka, witness |
"I heard somebody screaming 'help, help,' and I rushed to him, but I could not move him because he was heavy."
Ranjith Gunasekara, a police spokesman, told the Associated Press news agency that at least 40 other people were injured in Moratuwa.
The incident on Friday is the latest in a series of attacks against commuters in and around Colombo.
At least 18 people were wounded when a bomb exploded as a packed commuter train passed between Colombo's Wellawatte and Dehiwela areas on Wednesday. And on May 26, another attack on a commuter train blamed on the Tamil Tigers killed nine people and wounded 84 others.
Civilians targeted
"What is noticeable is that the targeting of civilians seems to have been stepped up," Minelle Fernandez, reporting from Colombo for Al Jazeera, said.
"The military and the government says this is a sign of the increasing desperation of the LTTE as they take hits on the northern battlefront, they want to move the attention of the government and the resources of the military to the south."
Mahinda Rajapakse, Sri Lanka's president, said he was shocked by the first attack.
"This brutality ... shows the efforts of the LTTE to provoke a backlash against the Tamil people from which it hopes to gain, although the Tamil people themselves are held in thrall by the terror of its so-called liberator," he said in a statement.
The LTTE says that a roadside explosive device planted by government forces killed two civilians on Thursday night. Six other people reportedly died in a similar attack on Monday.
The latest violence came as the Sri Lankan military is pressing an offensive to retake northern areas controlled by the Tigers.
(Courtesy : AlJazeera)