The World - News from April 23, 1985

Tamil separatists in Sri Lanka set a timer wrong and blew up a bus carrying two dozen of their comrades instead of a military convoy, a government spokesman said. The bus was carrying Tamil guerrilla suspects rounded up by troops. Four soldiers also died in the blast, near Jaffna, capital of the country’s Tamil-dominated Northern province. The spokesman speculated that the device was the work of guerrillas of the Tamil Eelam Liberation Organization, one of several groups seeking a separate homeland in Sri Lanka, in which Sinhalese are in the majority. In another incident, authorities said an explosion damaged a newly built police station in the eastern harbor town of Trincomalee and that Tamils were suspected.