At least 12 people have died and over 100 others have been injured in a suicide bomb attack onboard a train at the main railway station in the Sri Lankan capital Colombo.
The attack was carried out by a suspected rebel Tamil Tiger woman suicide bomber who blew herself up on a crowded train platform as passengers exited a suburban train in the heart of Colombo.
Earlier today, at least six visitors to a zoo on the outskirts of the capital were wounded in a hand grenade attack.
Yesterday, 20 passengers were killed by a bus bomb in north-central Sri Lanka.
The attacks against civilians, blamed on separatist Tamil Tiger rebels, have been come despite tight security ahead of Sri Lanka's independence day celebrations on Monday.
Sri Lanka marks its 60th anniversary as an independent country tomorrow.
The country’s Freedom Day celebrations are the first major national event since Colombo formally ended the Norwegian-arranged 2002 truce and vowed to crush the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam militarily.
Fighting between troops and the Tamil Tigers around the rebel-held Wanni region in the north and the rest of the island left nearly 1,000 people dead last month alone, according to defence ministry figures.
The military will deploy 4,100 troops for a ceremonial parade tomorrow in addition to drawing thousands of commandos and paramilitary police forces from the provinces to beef up security, he said.
Sri Lanka's government believes it has the upper hand against the Tamil rebels and has ruled out any negotiations until winning a militarily victory by re-capturing northern territories controlled by the Tamil Tigers.
