Condemning this morning`s bomb blast in Anuradhapura, leader of the SLFP Mahajana Wing Mangala Samaraweera says the Rajapaksa government should take full responsibility for the attack.
In a statement, he said whoever may have committed it, he strongly denounced the attack that killed 24, including opposition leader of the North Central Province retired Maj. Gen. Janaka Perera and UNP district manager Dr. A. Johnpulle, and injured 100 others.

Elections Commissisoner Dayananda Dishanayake has announced that Vinayagamurthy Muralitharan has been appointed as a member of the 6th Parliament. Accordingly, he is due to take oaths as a Parliamentarian

The announcement has been made in a Special Gazette Notification. He is popularly known as Karuna Amman. It will grant him an opportunity to represent the voice of the Eastern Tamil polity. He joined the LTTE in 1983 and was once even a bodyguard of the Prabhakaran and the armed leader of the outfit. In March 2004, he broke away from the mainstream LTTE alleging that Prabhakaran intentionally dragged the peace talks so that the cadres could exploit the cessation of hostilities to regroup. He joined the peace talks with the desire of reaching a political solution to meet the aims of the outfit. But he understood the truth of the leadership at the end of the discussions. Disillusioned by these developments, Mr. Muralitharan maintained silence during the final period of the LTTE outfit. He ditched the terrorist outfit and entered the democratic fold, serving collectively with the Eastern Tamil civilians. Thereafter, he was able to gain the confidence of these civilians. The opportunity to represent Parliament is another severe blow to the LTTE. Political analysts claim that paving the way for a terrorist leader to enter the political field clearly displayed the transparency of the Government s democratic policy.