CLASSIFIED | POLITICS | TERRORISM | OPINION | VIEWS

NAVY FINDS THE SECOND PLASTIC EXPLOSIVE LADEN TRUCK BOMB PARKED IN AN EASTERN PROVINCE FISHING VILLAGE

By Walter Jayawardhana

Sri Lankan security forces may have found the second high explosive laden truck bomb they have been searching for about a month after the arrest of a similar truck bomb which had been taken into custody earlier in the country’s North Western Province at Nikaweratiya. The Sri Lanka Navy announced it found a second truck bomb laden with C-4 plastic explosives near an Eastern fishing village close to the port town of Trincomalee was found june 29.

During the first find of a truck bomb near Nikaweretiya suspected LTTE cadres under interrogation revealed there was another truck that was packed with high explosives and wired to be a truck bomb and for nearly one month security forces have been on the look out for it.Sri Lanka Navy revealed about 2200 pounds (1000 kilograms) of plastic explosives , the equivalent amount , found in the Nikaveratiya truck was also found in this truck.

According to the Navy the second truck happens to be a freezer truck and a man connected with the truck was also arrested near the truck. The navy said it was acting on a tip off. The Navy said they suspected the truck to have been used in a suicide attack by the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE). When the investigators reached the truck it was parked in a fishing village.

Suicide truck attacks have played a prominent role in the LTTE military attacks against civilian targets , military installations, and economically strategic locations in the past. Trincomalee is about 135 miles (215 kilometers) from the capital city of Colombo and is close to the Kilinochchi and Mulativu Districts which are the only LTTE strongholds of the country.

The first explosive laden truck was caught at a police road block check point in Nikaweratiya by a police sergeant who suspected a truck when the Tamil driver offered Rupees 500 as a bribe to avoid a thorough search of the truck. The Sergeant emptied the lorry and found the explosives hidden in secret chambers wired all over to make the whole truck to explode as a one huge bomb. In 1996 91 civilians died in a similar truck bomb attack against the country’s Central Bank by the LTTE.

In a a similar attack against the country’s holiest shrine-The Temple of the Tooth- where Buddha’s tooth relic is enshrined the LTTE killed 17 Buddhist worshippers. After the discovery of the first truck at kotavehera, in Nikaweratiya on June 1, LTTE cadres confessed to the knowledge of the second truck. The navy said the second truck was found at the fishing village called Padikkiya and bomb disposal experts defused the truck bomb. Interrogations are being conducted by investigators. (

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