COLOMBO, 18 October 2006 — Sri Lankan warplanes hit Tamil Tiger targets yesterday, a day after a suicide bombing killed more than 100 people and derailed efforts to save a collapsing peace process.

The rebels and the government had agreed to hold Oct. 28-29 peace talks in Switzerland before Sri Lanka’s worst-ever suicide attack on Monday left at least 103 people dead and 150 more wounded, most of them sailors.

The talks are now in jeopardy, but Norway’s special envoy Jon Hanssen-Bauer and the Sri Lankan government’s top peace negotiator Nimal Siripala de Silva met yesterday and discussed a possible agenda for the negotiations.

Even as diplomatic efforts continued to keep the process on track, the Sri Lankan military was launching retaliatory attacks with air force raids on two Tiger sea bases and a Tiger military camp.

“It is believed that the airstrikes had inflicted heavy damages to terrorists,” the Defense Ministry said. The rebel Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) said Israeli-built Kfir jets bombed their “Voice of Tigers” radio transmitting tower, but insisted the station would not go off the air.

A government statement said that de Silva, who is also the health minister, asked Hanssen-Bauer to inform the Tigers not to take the government’s willingness to negotiate as a sign of weakness.

“Mr. Hanssen-Bauer told the minister that he will hold talks with the LTTE too and take further steps in the peace process and to prepare an agenda,” the statement from the Defense Ministry said.

Hanssen-Bauer was expected to leave tomorrow for the rebel-held town of Kilinochchi for separate talks with the LTTE political wing leader S.P. Thamilselvan.

The Sri Lankan Defense Ministry, also reeling from a major battlefield defeat last week in the northern peninsula of Jaffna, has been conducting air raids on Tiger areas since Monday’s bombing.

“Air force (Israeli-made) Kfir jets pounded a Tiger terrorist base in Puthukuddierippu in the evening,” the ministry said. “According to intelligence sources, airstrikes have completely destroyed the Tiger military base.

However, the pro-rebel Tamilnet.com website said two children were killed and 15 others wounded when four jets struck a civilian settlement and destroyed nine homes.

Japan’s special peace envoy Yasushi Akashi was also on the island for talks with President Mahinda Rajapakse.

Akashi is due to hold separate discussions today in Kilinochchi with the Tigers who are fighting for a separate homeland for the Tamil minority in this Sinhalese-majority country.

International concern over Sri Lanka’s deteriorating security situation was led by UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan, who described Monday’s suicide attack as “appalling.”

“The secretary-general stresses once again that a return to civil war will not resolve the conflict,” his spokesman Stephane Dujarric said. “He calls upon all parties to refrain from the use of force and to return to the negotiation table at the end of this month, as tentatively agreed between the government of Sri Lanka and the LTTE.”

In Washington, State Department spokesman Sean McCormack also urged the LTTE to “renounce the use of terror.” US Assistant Secretary of State for South and Central Asian Affairs Richard Boucher is due here tomorrow. Diplomats and analysts said the upsurge in violence has left the Switzerland talks in serious doubt, with neither side in the brutal ethnic conflict appearing ready to abandon their military mind-set.

Search for Clues in Bloody

Debris of the Suicide Blast

The mobile phones, stowed in bags still on board shattered, blackened buses, rang until dawn as frantic relatives sought news of their sons, Sri Lankan sailors about to come home on leave.

Many of those whose families anxiously waited for news would never return, killed instead by Tamil Tiger suicide bombers who detonated a truck packed with explosives next to the hundreds of naval personnel as they lined up to get on buses home.

As dawn broke yesterday, a day after the island’s worst-ever suicide bombing, survivors and colleagues picked through the bloodied debris. Helmets and flak jackets, many shredded by shrapnel and bloodstained, were tossed into piles while civilian bags were rifled through for clues to their owners.

Some opened letters, others tried to piece together torn identity papers.

All around the ground was littered with the ordinary and the intimate; tins of shoe polish were trampled into the ground.

One sailor, sweating in the early morning heat, walked woodenly in a tight circle without looking at the photograph he clutched in one of his hands.