Three killed in Sri Lanka blast as Bush and Clinton tour

Three people were killed and 38 injured in a blast at a courthouse in southern Sri Lanka, police said, as former US presidents George Bush and Bill Clinton toured the region.







Three people were killed and 38 injured in a blast at a courthouse in southern Sri Lanka, police said, as former US presidents George Bush and Bill Clinton toured the region. Police said they suspected that a remand prisoner may have lobbed a grenade inside the courthouse in the town of Embilipitiya as the magistrate began hearing cases listed for the day.

"We suspect this to be the work of a man held in prison custody at the court premises," the region's top police officer, Kingsley Ekanayake, told AFP on Monday.

He said a prison guard and a man and a woman were killed, while a spokesman for the Embilipitiya hospital said 38 people were admitted to hospital, among them a three-year-old child.

The magistrate and lawyers were not injured.

Police said more than two dozen prisoners had escaped in the confusion following the bombing.

Prisons' chief Rumy Marzook said 56 remand prisoners had been taken to court Monday morning and about half of them were believed to have