At least a dozen people were killed and 17 others were inured in a suspected Tamil Tiger bomb attack on a civilian bus in north-east Sri Lanka today.
The attack occurred just hours after the armed forces held a defiant show of military prowess in the capital to mark the country's sixtieth anniversary of independence from Britain.
The attack is the latest in a series of bomb attacks blamed on the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE), the rebel group fighting to create an independent state in the island's north and east.
On Saturday, a bomb exploded on a civilian bus in the central Sri Lankan town of Dambulla, killing at least 18 people and wounding 50. The following day, a suspected Tamil Tiger suicide bomber blew herself up in a packed railway station in Colombo, killing 11 people and wounding 92.
Thousands of police and troops were on high alert in the capital Colombo as the island's armed forces put on a show of military might along a promenade by the Indian Ocean.
"Two years ago no one believed that terrorists could be defeated, but during the last two years we made it a reality in our motherland," President Mahinda Rajapaksa said in a speech, referring to territorial gains against the rebels in the east.
"We have had the cancer of terrorism for three of the six decades since independence," he added. "The challenge bestowed on us by history is the defeat of terrorism and the development of the country."
Fighting between the Sri Lankan military and the LTTE rebels has intensified since the government scrapped a peace truce last month, saying the rebels were using it to rebuild and re-arm and were not sincere about talking peace.
The conflict has killed an estimated 70,000 people since 1983.