Lanka peace monitors hit by bomb attacks

Meanwhile two sailors were killed and another wounded Saturday in a claymore mine attack by suspected Tiger rebels on the northern Jaffna peninsula in the latest of a series of assaults on the navy.

A similar bomb and a hand grenade were found by troops sweeping a main road in Jaffna for mines early in the morning, the ministry said.

Before dawn an explosion ripped though a parking area of the Norwegian-led Sri Lanka Monitoring Mission (SLMM) office in Batticaloa, 300 km east of the capital, police said.

A pickup truck was badly damaged and shrapnel peppered three other SLMM vehicles, police said adding that there were no casualties in the attack.

"We suspect that the bomb was either planted in the ground or was attached to a wheel of the pickup truck," a police official told AFP. "We have called in forensic experts to carry out an investigation."

There was no immediate claim of responsibility and the SLMM had issued no comment.

The blast came just hours after the monitors asked the Colombo government to disarm anti-LTTE paramilitary units operating in the east, including Batticaloa, and also criticised the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam for the upsurge in violence.

On Christmas day, a pro-LTTE legislator was shot dead while he attended a midnight service at a Catholic church in Batticaloa, which is heavily guarded by troops.

The bombing of the SLMM office was the latest in a series of attacks against the Scandinavian monitors who number about 60 and are deployed under a trucebrokered by Norway.

The SLMM was established several weeks after the ceasefire went into effect on February 23, 2002 and has on several occasions had vehicles attacked and its members threatened.