Sri Lanka was braced for an upsurge in violence yesterday after a government minister was killed by a roadside bomb blamed on separatist rebels.

The assassination of D. M. Dassanayake, the Construction Minister, occurred only days after the Government withdrew from a six-year ceasefire with the Tamil Tigers. He was the second Member of Parliament to be killed in the war-torn island nation in the past week.

The 51-year-old died on the operating table from severe head injuries, government officials said. Eight others were injured in the blast near the town of Ja-Ela, 12 miles (20km) north of Colombo, the capital, on the road to the international airport.

The minister’s driver and bodyguard also died, according to TamilNet, the pro-Tamil website.

Local television channels showed Mr Dassanayake’s shattered car, which was hit by a Claymore fragmentation mine, with blood smeared on a rear passenger door. As the minister was rushed to the operating theatre, they broadcast footage of a doctor sitting astride him pumping his chest in a desperate attempt to save his life.

Mr Dassanayake, who was not in the Cabinet, was on his way to Parliament to take part in the first day of the new year session. As a hardliner in the Government of Mahinda Rajapaksa, he may have been targeted because he was overseeing the reconstruction of the country’s eastern province after the expulsion of rebels in July.

The Tamil Tigers routinely deny attacks on government ministers but the blame was laid firmly at their door. “This is a very brutal assassination and we are saddened. We are quite sure that it was done by the terrorists,” Anura Yapa, the Media Minister, said.

President Rajapaksa condemned the attack. “His assassination should be a further call for unity by all who stand for freedom and democracy to come together, shedding petty political or other differences, to decidedly defeat terrorism in our country,” he said. “This sad event is a further reminder of the need to redouble our efforts to rid our country of terrorism and the use of violence to achieve political ends.”

Mr Dassanayake’s death was the first assassination of a senior Sri Lankan official since June 2006, when the rebels killed Major-General Parami Kulatunga, the country’s third-highest-ranking military officer.

The attack happened two days after a top rebel intelligence officer was killed by government troops. Shanmuganathan Ravishankar, also known as Colonel Charles, was in charge of the rebels' ground intelligence.

Hope fades

— More than 70,000 people have been killed since fighting broke out in 1983 for an independent state for the Sri Lankan Tamil minority, who claim discrimination by the Sinhalese

— The Government wants a one-nation one-state solution

— Over the past two years 5,000 people have been killed

— At least 85 people, mostly rebels, have been killed in the north of Sri Lanka since last week, when the Government pulled out of the ceasefire negotiated by Norway in 2002

— The catalyst was a bomb blast near a bus in Colombo, which killed a soldier and three civilians

— International observers believe that the breakdown of the ceasefire has ended any hope of new peace talks

Ashling O’Connor

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