COLOMBO, Sri Lanka: Suspected Tamil Tiger rebels detonated a roadside bomb in eastern Sri Lanka on Saturday, killing a police commando, the military said.
The blast occurred in the town of Kaluwanchikudy, in a region where some of the heaviest fighting has taken place as the government seeks to oust the Tamil Tigers from their bases there, the military's media center said.
Kaluwanchikudy is some 220 kilometers (136 miles) east of the capital, Colombo.
Also Saturday, two soldiers and a policeman were wounded in two other separate blasts in the island's north and east, the center said.
In a separate incident, the military said air force planes bombed a position of the Tigers' sea wing in the northern Mullaitivu district on Saturday. Details on damage were not available.
The blasts came a day after suspected rebels blew up a military vehicle near the northern town of Vavuniya killing five soldiers, while eight civilians died in a mortar barrage. Both sides blamed each other for the shelling.
The blasts capped a violent week that saw the rebels' first airstrike in their two-decade conflict Monday, a suicide bombing at a military camp Tuesday and a naval battle off the eastern coast on Thursday.
The Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam have fought the government since 1983 to create an independent homeland for Sri Lanka's 3.1 million ethnic Tamil minority who suffered decades of discrimination by the majority Sinhalese-dominated state.
A Norway brokered cease-fire in 2002 scaled down violence, raising hopes for a permanent end to one of Asia's longest civil conflicts that had killed 65,000 people by then.
Violence resumed in late 2005 killing another 4,000 people, according to European monitors.
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