A powerful time bomb planted in a car exploded Thursday in Colombo outside a newspaper office run by a minority Tamil political party, injuring at least one person and causing extensive damage to surrounding buildings, police said, according to DPA. The car belonged to a personal assistant of Douglas Devananda, the leader of the anti-Tamil rebel Eelam People's Democratic Party (EPDP) and the only Tamil minister remaining in Sri Lanka's coalition government after the August assassination of foreign minister Lakshman Kadirgamar. Devananda has survived numerous attempts on his own life. Police said that although the bomb went off opposite the EPDP newspaper at Wellawatte, six kilometres south of the centre of the capital, they believed the bomb detonated prematurely and was meant to go off inside Devananda's ministry of agricultural marketing and development and Hindu affairs. "The minister's personal assistant was delayed by 10 minutes as he received a telephone call," an EPDP spokesman said. "He would have left for the ministry if not for the call." "We are not sure whether they were trying to target the minister himself," the spokesman added while blaming the Tamil rebel group, the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE).
