A Sri Lankan government minister has been killed by a roadside bomb near the capital, Colombo, the country's military said.
DM Dassanayake, the nation-building minister, who is not a member of the cabinet, died in hospital after his car was blown up today in the Ja-Ela area, about 12 miles north of the city.
The blast, which came days after the Sri Lankan government formally pulled out of a long-ignored ceasefire with the Tamil Tiger rebels (LTTE), wounded 10 others.
The president, Mahinda Rajapaksa, condemned the attack, accusing the rebels of "absolute disregard for human values and practices of democracy".
"This sad event is a further reminder of the need to redouble our efforts to rid our country of terrorism and the use of violence to achieve political ends," he said in a statement.
Rajapaksa said the attack was an example of the rebel group's "continued commitment to terror and violence to achieve its separatist goals".
Brigadier Udaya Nanayakkara, a military spokesman, said no one had been arrested but "suspicion is on the LTTE".
The Tamil Tigers, known formally as Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam, have been blamed for an increase in attacks around Colombo in recent months.
Last Wednesday, suspected rebels detonated a bomb near a bus transporting wounded soldiers through the capital, killing a soldier and three civilians. Soon after, Sri Lanka's cabinet decided to withdraw from a 2002 truce that had all but collapsed over the past two years.
In the four days since then, fresh violence across the main battle zone in the north has killed 85, according to the military.
The Tamil Tigers have routinely targeted senior political and military figures.
In 2006, a female suicide bomber failed to kill Lieutenant General Sarath Fonseka, an army commander. He was critically wounded, but resumed work after treatment.
Later that year, the defence secretary, Gotabhaya Rajapaksa, escaped a bomb attack without injuries. In November, a female suicide bomber tried to kill a government minister, killing an aide instead.
The last successful assassination took place in 2006, when the rebels killed Major General Parami Kulatunga, Sri Lanka's third most senior military officer.
More than 70,000 people have been killed since the rebels began fighting in 1983 for an independent state for the ethnic Tamil minority, claiming discrimination by the Sinhalese majority.