Police investigating a recent LTTE suicide attack on police near the Presidential Secretariat have located the guest house where the suicide cadre had allegedly stayed. "We sealed the guest house over the weekend," Police spokesman SSP Ranjith Gunasekera told The Island yesterday, revealing investigators had recovered a photocopy of the National Identity Card (NIC) of the suicide cadre from the manager.

The official said the guest house situated in the Dehiwela-Mount Lavunia area would have been used by undercover LTTE operatives on previous occasions as well. Had the manager come forward before investigators tracked him down, the situation would have been different, Gunasekera said.

The official said police probing LTTE attacks had made some important breakthrough in the recent past. The arrest of the manager of the guest house situated on Station Road, Dehiwela would facilitate the investigation, he said.

The May 16 blast killed ten persons and wounded almost 100, several hours before TMVP leader Sivanesathurai Chandrakanthan took oaths before President Mahinda Rajapaksa as Chief Minister of the Eastern Provincial Council. Within 24 hours after the attack, Trincomalee Police arrested the person who allegedly owned the explosives-laden motor cycle used in the attack.

Meanwhile, a senior police official said the June 4 attack on a passenger train had been an attempt to derail the train. "It was shape charge," he asserting had the blast ‘cut’ the track before the locomotive passed the spot, the entire train or at least the majority of compartments would have been thrown to the sea. "It would have been a disaster," he said. Under interrogation, the suspect who was captured within 24 hours after the blast as he tried to enter Vavuniya had said that due to some technical glitch the triggering mechanism hadn’t worked. The delay by just a few seconds had allowed the locomotive and two compartments to pass the place where the track was severed, the official said.

Police also revealed the circumstances in which investigators swiftly identified the suspect and alerted police and military posts. The arrest was made at Irretteperiyakulam checkpoint, south of Vavuniya. Police said a document recovered from the bag belonging to the suspect which he had dropped as he got away after a scuffle with a three wheeler driver led investigators to the passport office. "We found his photograph there," the official said, revealing authorities had also managed to track him down as he passed Dambulla with the help of a mobile phone company. This was after the investigators had found the number of the LTTE cadre’s mobile phone number written on a piece of paper.