Suicide bomber brings carnage to hospital doorstep

Several of the three-wheeler taxi drivers who raised the alarm were among the 28 people wounded and rushed to the emergency ward of the adjoining General Hospital.

"I saw a taxi driver go into the hospital to call a policeman," said Ranjith Premasiri, a grocer opposite the gates of the Eye Hospital. "They came out together and the next thing was I heard a massive blast."

Hospital director Hector Weerasinghe said a total of six people, including the suicide bomber, died in the blast. He said 25 people were admitted to the emergency ward and 10 of them were taken to the intensive care unit. Windows were shattered at florist shops and snack bars along Deens Road by the force of the blast, Premasiri added.

A police spokesman at the scene said the casualty figures could have been far greater had the suicide bomber made it into the hospital building. Police immediately cordoned off the Eye Hospital intersection and closed the hospital’s gates while forensic experts and detectives combed the blast site. No patients in the hospital were injured in the blast, but many were shocked by the powerful explosion which was heard several blocks away.

The attack appeared to be a carbon copy of a bombing outside the prime minister’s office on January 5 this year when 12 people were killed when a woman suicide bomber blew herself up while being searched by a female constable.

Health Minister Nimal Siripala de Silva may have been counting his lucky stars for a second time. His office is located a short distance away from the scene of Friday’s attack. De Silva narrowly escaped being killed by a suicide bomber on July 4 1996 in the northern peninsula of Jaffna when he visited the region as Housing Minister to supervise reconstruction work in the embattled region.