Shocks 45 feet away

Yesterday morning by around 0851hrs a thundering explosion was heard. Apparently it was just 45 feet away from our head office. An army bus had been targetted by a suicide cadre; which was later revealed to be a remote activated bomb. Casualties are reported to be in the range of 5 members but we feel its much more. The whole area has been cordoned off and we had shut the office for safety. No fire was reported. The driver of the bus seemed to be in bad shape but sources said he will survive. The inability to access further info was due to the fact that; the area of the incident was just 100ftt away from the harbour and thus the forces were immediately in the scene to clear matters. There was also some rapid firing taking place to scare all away from the explosion area.

The bike used by the supposed suicide cadre is beyond identity (kuduvela). However on further investigation it was revealed that the person who tried this attack had used one of our wharf clerk's bikes to hang the bomb. The wharf works from 0700 to 1800 and his bike was utilised.

I apparently had the opportunity to have a sneak peak as Ms/ Bakshani's who are right opposite to us; who has(had) a wall at the rear which is no more due to the impact and is thus open to the reclamation road. On just looking through, i had found quite an amount of blood on the patch i could see from where i stood. However no bodies or flesh was to be seen.

Further on my return back to the office, certain other members who had gone in after me to view the incident had been taken by the police for questioning. Pity them. But thats life in Sri Lanka aint it?

The rest shall be followed in the news which shall be masked. My gut feeling is that there would have been around 8 casualties. The bomb was a claymore; although none of the windows close by have been damaged. However, i once again repeat that it IS a high impact device.

Whats very astonishing is that; the reclamation road is used by any person coming through mattakkuliya/grandpass to connect through fort/colpetty. And this area being a target seriously puts our safety in question.

Today, the site seemed to have returned to normalcy.

Until when?...thats the question....!
K!