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Four killed in boat blast off Mannar
By Dilmini Samaranayake
A suspected LTTE boat with at least four people on board exploded yesterday northeast of Mannar as a navy fast-attack craft approached it for inspection, officials said.

A sailor onboard the navy vessel was also seriously wounded in the blast and was rushed to the Anuradhapura hospital. The navy had spotted the fishing trawler heading toward Vedithativu , an LTTE-controlled territory, and was approaching it for inspection when the trawler suddenly exploded about 10 nautical miles off Thalaimannar. The vessel had caught fire and sank.

"It is belived the trawler was transporting large quantities of explosives to the uncleared areas at the time the detection was made," the government said in a statement without naming any group’s involvement.

"There was definitely a large quantity of explosives on board for such an explosion to take place," military spokesman Prasad Samarasinghe said.
He called it a "terrorist act," but stopped short of saying it was an LTTE vessel.

Meanwhile, the LTTE has confirmed to the Sri Lanka Monitoring Mission that one of its vessels was involved in an incident at sea but later retracted its statement.

“Initial reports from the LTTE peace secretariat indicated the LTTE Sea Tigers were involved in an incident at Seat but later said there was no involvement,” SLMM spokeswoman Helen Olafsdottir said.

However, navy sources said they believed that the Tigers were transporting a large cache of arms and ammunition in a multi-day fishing vessel and blasted it to avoid detection.

Last month, the navy intercepted an Indian fishing vessel along the same route while it was smuggling 61,000 detonators.

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