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It is tragic news from Gampaha Sri Lanka that at least 10 people, including senior Sri Lankan Government minister, the Hon. Jeyraj Fernandopulle Highways Minister who was attending an event to mark the forthcoming Sinhala and Tamil New Year in the western district of Gampaha together with 10 others have been killed in a bomb blast at Gampaha Sri Lanka according to latest police reports.

All the available information points blame to theTamil Tiger rebels, who want an independent state for Sri Lanka's Tamil minority and the Defence Ministry has confirmed this. Mr Fernandopulle is the second minister to have been assassinated this year. The former minister for nation building, DM Dassanayake, was killed in a bombing on 8 January, days after the government pulled out of a ceasefire with the Tamil Tigers on the basis that it was meaningless where the LTTE were using it as a platform to fortify their terrorist resources.

This latest attrocity must spur on the Government's resolve to crush the separatist rebels by the end of this year or the next as the latest defence policy statements indicate, in a far greater measure than before as Mr.Fernandopulle was a moderate who had the best interests of all Sri Lankan's at heart in his campaign to find a reasonable solution to Sri lanka's ethnic problem and this latest attrocity attests to the ruthlessness of the Tamil Tigers and their total lack of conscience or direction as Mr Fernandopulle himself belonged to the Tamil Community which the worthless dialogue of the Tigers always suggest they represent the Tamils and this certainly suggest totally to the contrary.They probably do not know whom they represent beyond their own terrorist enclave as some experts have described the LTTE and their present direction and appear to be a lost and confused as well as directionless oddity of criminals!

The explosion is reported to have happened as Mr Fernandopulle was attending a New Year celebration in Gampaha, 20km (12 miles) outside Colombo, police have said, when he was about to raise a flag to start a marathon race at which point the bomb is said to have gone off. It is not known whether it was a suicide bombing or a detonated bomb as forensic experts are pouring over the evidence at this time.

The director-general of the government's Media Centre for National Security, Lakshman Hulugalle, is reported to have told the BBC that the minister was killed by the explosion along with many of those around him.

At least 25 people were also seriously injured and have been rushed to a local hospital,according to the on site reports coming in from police sources and eyewitmesses.

Mr Fernandopulle, who was in charge of roads and highways in the country was a senior figure in the government, and a vehement critic of the Tamil Tigers whose modus operandi and legitimacies were often exposed as unacceptable within democratic Sri Lanka

and in their typically cowardly, meaningless and spineless fashion once again they have assassinated a member of Sri lanka's Government for which they are criminally liable.

This cowardly attack will surely silence the garbled albeit loud rhetoric of pro LTTE elements in protest of the Armed Forces' all out drive to eliminate the LTTE terrorists which now appears to be one of Sri Lanka's foremost priorities as each cowardly individual belonging to this worthless group of internationally proscribed terrorists need to be sought out and destroyed without any hesitation as the longer they are tolerated the greater the threat to the Nation's as well as the Region's security!

LankaWeb sends out heartfelt condolences to Mr Fernandopulle's family and the families of all those who have lost loved ones in this cowardly attack!

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