By Kalinga Weerakkody
Police last week found two LTTE suicide jackets which contained the biggest amount of explosives found so far in such deadly kits.

On a tip off, sleuths found one jacket in a partially built house in a construction site at Pullichchakulam, Bundala in Chilaw while the other was seized from an undisclosed location in Colombo. Police officials declined to divulge where it was found saying it will hamper on-going investigations.

‘The Tigers generally used anything between 700 grammes to 1 kilo of explosives in each suicide jacket to blast their targets, but in each of these two suicide kits high explosives varying from two and a half to three and a half kilos were found’, PPR Director, SSP Rienzie Perera told a news conference at CDB headquarters last Friday.

Using a jacket of this nature would have obviously killed more people than the other types because the explosives content was more, he said.

The jackets had twin switches and packs of steel pellets in pouches to inflict maximum damage, SSP Perera said.

They also had a switch to check whether the circuit was functioning before the bomber went for the target, he said.

One suspect arrested had told investigators that the target was former North-East Chief Minister Varatharaja Perumal but this could have been an attempt to mislead the police, he said.

The first jacket was found during a joint STF-CDB operation.