The death toll in the attack against Sri Lankan Navy personnel blamed on the Tamil Tiger rebels has risen to 99 with 116 others injured, a government minister said.

Keheliya Rambukwella, the minister of Policy Planning and the government's defense spokesman, said that several injured sailors were in critical condition.

The attack took place near Habarana, 173 km northeast of the capital Colombo around 1:45 PM local time (08:15 GMT) at a transit point of Navy personnel in the village of Daganapothaha.
 
The Media Center for National Security (MCNS) said in a statement that the truck crashed into a convoy of 24 Navy buses with about 340 unarmed sailors onboard, damaging 12 buses in the convoy.

The statement said the Navy convoy was carrying unarmed sailors who were both going on leave and reporting back to duty.

"This inhuman act is a clear revenge by the terrorists on the Navy who inflicted successive defeats for the LTTE against their attempts of smuggling arms and explosives during the recent past," said the statement, adding that it is a blatant violation of the ceasefire agreement.

The attack came less than two weeks before the proposed direct talks between the government and the LTTE and has cast a cloud over the talks.

The government said in a statement that it "vehemently condemns the brutal killing by the LTTE and expresses condolences to the next of kin of the victims."

It added that the attack happened on the eve of a new round of peace negotiations, which clearly shows the evil designs of the LTTE to sabotage the internationally backed peace process.

The government has called on the international community to "take stock of the LTTE's most brutal act at a time when the dates for the next round of peace talks and the venue has been decided."

However, the government said the peace talks scheduled for October 28 and 29 in Switzerland would go ahead as planned in spite of the attack.

"They (talks) were arranged prior to the incident so they will go ahead. The government will show its commitment to a negotiated settlement," said Rambukwella.

The LTTE would neither deny nor accept responsibility for the attack, but it declined to spare military targets outside the so-called Forward Defense Lines that separate government troops and LTTE fighters.

The pro-LTTE website TamilNet quoted LTTE's military spokesman Irasiah Ilanthirayan as saying that he had contacted the regional command of the LTTE for verification of the Habarana attack.

"When Sri Lanka Air Force bombers continue to bomb targets in Tamil homeland, far off the defense line localities where the Sri Lankan ground troops engage in frontal assaults, how could anybody expect the Tigers to refrain from targeting military installations?" Ilanthirayan said.

The government said after the blast it had ordered air strikes against identified rebel targets in the Eastern Province.

However, Ilanthirayan said the Air Force had bombed villages in the Northern Province, causing injuries to civilians.

The escalating violence in the island country has cost over 2,000 lives since the end of 2005, endangering the Norwegian backed process to end the island's separatist armed conflict.

More than 64,000 were killed in Sri Lanka's ethnic conflict from 1980s to 2002 when the Norwegians brokered a ceasefire agreement between the two parties.

Japan's special peace envoy Yasushi Akashi is currently in Sri Lanka in a bid to bring the government and the LTTE to talks.

Akashi will be joined by Norwegian peace envoy Jon Hanssen-Bauer and US Under Secretary of State Richard Boucher this week to push forward the country's peace process.

(Xinhua News Agency October 17, 2006)