28 Killed in Sri Lanka Blast

28 Killed in Sri Lanka Blast

By Corryn Wetzel, 2/10/09

South and Southwest Asia

 

At a military checkpoint north of Visuamadu and in the Mullathivu district, twenty-eight people were killed due to a suicide bomber.  The check point was meant to screen many departing civilians getting out of the battle zone.

A woman entered an internally displaced rescue center blew herself up, along with many civilians. As a soldier approached her for screening she triggered a bomb fastened to her body. As many as twenty soldiers and eight civilians have been reported dead, but sixty-four have been reported as injured, many in critical condition.

The military released a videotape of many bodies on the ground, some of them children, along with an image of the suicide bomber’s detached head. The explosion took place at the peak of civilian departure. These people who were injured or killed were either solders or citizens trying to escape the violence and areas of war.

Sri Lanka accused the LTTE, otherwise known as The Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam, a militant terrorist organization, of purposefully targeting retreating citizens as a reprisal for their refusal to take up arms against the military. This terrible attack is expected to have a profound impact on the citizens hoping to escape from the quickly diminishing land in the LTTE control.