COLOMBO, Sri Lanka (Reuters) - At least four people were killed and five wounded when a female suicide bomber blew herself up in a suburb of the Sri Lankan capital Colombo on Tuesday, police said.
The bomber jumped in front of a car carrying Chief Inspector Mohammed Nilabdeen of the police terrorist investigation unit, a senior official from a nearby police station told reporters.
Nilabdeen was wounded and has been hospitalized. No details on his condition were immediately available.
As well as the bomber, the dead included a man who swallowed a cyanide capsule when apprehended at the blast site, police said.
W.P. Dayaratne, superintendent of police of the Mount Lavinia division, said some of those wounded were traveling in a bus that was close to the police car.
Police officials say the death toll from the explosion, which occurred near the Mount Lavinia police station, could rise as two of the wounded were critical in hospital.
The blast went off around 5.30 p.m. (6:30 a.m. EST) and comes just ahead of a meeting Thursday of foreign ministers of seven South Asian nations in the central hill town of Nuwara Eliya.
Several vehicles were damaged by the explosion. Police cordoned off the area causing traffic chaos in the evening rush hour.
Tuesday's blast follows a spate of bombings in Colombo last week in which one person was killed and 11 injured in three separate late-night explosions.
The government blamed last week's attacks on Tamil Tiger rebels, saying the guerrillas were trying to destabilize the city.
Security has been tightened in Colombo and up to 20 suspects have been detained following last week's trouble.
In February last year a suicide bomber blew herself up at a military checkpoint in Colombo hours after Britain's Prince Charles left the island after attending independence anniversary celebrations. Nine people were killed.
A month later in March a bus exploded at a busy crossing during the afternoon rush hour killing nearly 40 people.
Since then there have been several small blasts in Colombo, but Tuesday's was the first triggered by a suicide bomber since last year, police said.
The Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam have been fighting for a separate homeland for minority Tamils in Sri Lanka's north and east since 1983. Independent reports put the figure of those killed in the war at nearly 55,000.