The first major incident recorded in Colombo after the 2002 cease-fire agreement (CFA) was on July 7, 2004, when a suspected woman LTTE suicide bomber blew herself up at the Kollupitiya Police Station next to the Sri Lankan Prime Minister's official residence killing herself and four police personnel and injuring nine persons. Again, at least two persons were killed and 15 others wounded in a bomb blast at the end of a concert by ShahrukhKhan in Colombo on December 11, 2004. The August 12, 2005, killing of the then foreignaffairs minister, Lakshman Kadirgamar, near his private residence on Bullers Lane was the first major political assassination after the CFA.
2006 witnessed a significant spurt in violence in Colombo. On April 25, 2006, the Army Commander, Lt. General Sarath Fonseka, was injured while eight persons were killed when a female suicide cadre of the LTTE, disguised as a pregnant woman, blew herself up in front of the military hospital inside the Army Headquarters. The attack on the Army Commander, many believe, and this was recently admitted by the Sri Lankangovernment, really transformed the state’s policy towards the LTTE, tilting it towards a final assault against the rebels. Defense spokesperson and Minister Keheliya Rambukwella stated, on July 4, 2007, that, despite the LTTE’s highly provocative acts since the first Geneva talks in February 2006, thegovernment did not fire a single shot or violate the truce until the abortive attempt on Fonseka’s life; "Only then did thegovernment make a shift to use its military power, targeting the terrorists if national security is threatened."
A suicide bomber killed the Sri Lanka Army (SLA) Deputy Chief of Staff, Major General Parami Kulathunge, the third highest appointment in the SLA, and three others, at Pannipitiya, a Colombo suburb, on June 26, 2006. Kethesh Logananathan, Deputy Secretary-General of thegovernment's Secretariat for Coordinating the Peace Process and a former Eelam People's Revolutionary Liberation Front member, was shot dead by unidentified gunmen near Vandervet place in Dehiwela on August 12, 2006. On December 1, 2006, in another suicide attack, the LTTE targeted the Defence Secretary, Gotabhaya Rajapakse, who is also the brother of President Mahinda Rajapakse, at Dharmapala Mawatha, killing two soldiers and injuring 12 persons.
On March 26, 2007, the LTTE carried out their first ever air attack on the main Sri Lankan Air Force base in Katunayake at Colombo, killing three Air Force personnel and injuring 17. A light wing aircraft manned by the outfit dropped two bombs near the engineering section of the base. There were no damages to the fighter jets stationed at the Air Base. This, incidentally, is the same Air Base which a 14-member LTTE suicide squad attacked on July 24, 2001, destroying 11 aircraft and damaging three.
Again, on April 29, 2007, an LTTE aircraft bombed oil and gas storage facilities in and around Colombo. One of the two bombs dropped on Shell’s Muthurajawela Gas Storage Facility caused minor damage to the fire guard equipment while the other damaged the water supply. The two bombs dropped on the Kolonnawa Oil Storage Depot failed to explode.
On May 24, 2007, a suspected LTTE suicide bomber on an explosive-laden motorcycle rammed a bus carrying Army personnel on the First Cross Street in Colombo, killing two soldiers and wounding five persons. And on May 28, 2007, seven civilians were killed and 42 persons, including 36 civilians, sustained injuries, in an LTTE-triggered claymore mine explosion at Belekkade Junction in the Rathmalana area of the capital.
On June 1, 2007, Police seized a truck destined for Colombo, with 1,052 kilograms of C-4 explosives hidden under a pile of coconuts, at a Police Checkpoint in Kurunegala District. Later on June 10, Prime Minister Rathnasiri Wickramanayaka disclosed that the LTTE had sent another truck with over 1,000 kilograms of explosives into Colombo.
Amidst all these developments, the Colombo Police on June 7, 2007, started eviction of Tamils from the capital as part of a crackdown against the LTTE. 376 Tamil men, women and children, lodged in low-budget hotels, were forced out of their rooms, ordered into buses and driven off under armed escorts. Rohan Abeywardene, Inspector General of Police (IGP) for Colombo, later said the ethnic Tamils were being sent back to their own villages for their own safety amid a series of abductions blamed on state security services and the LTTE, and to avoid insurgents infiltrating the capital. On June 9, IGP Victor Perera stated that recent events had shown that the LTTE terrorists were operating without much difficulty in Colombo. Thegovernment later apologized for the involuntary deportation of the Tamils, after the Supreme Court stepped in and criticized the move.