Sri Lanka's rebels sent two planes on a surprise, kamikaze-style attack in the capital on Friday night, smashing a light aircraft into the main tax building - killing two people and wounding more than 40 - before anti-aircraft fire shot both of them out of the sky, officials said. One of the light aircraft that had flown over the tightly-guarded capital Colombo was shot down by anti-aircraft guns in a suburb while the second had crashed into the Inland Revenue Building, which caught fire. “We have found a blown off arm of the pilot on an upper floor,” an air force officer told reporters at the scene. He said a few pieces of the wreckage were found and they believed the aircraft had been carrying at least two bombs. The Tigers were believed to operate five Czech-built Zlin-143 aircraft smuggled into the island in pieces and re-assembled. Witnesses said the wreckage of the second plane was on the 13th floor suggesting that the bomb-laden light aircraft had crashed into the tax office in a kamikaze-style attack, killing the pilot and a bystander and wounding more than 43 other people, officials said. The other came down in a suburb, killing the pilot as well, the military said. The brazen raid by the Tamil Tigers' tiny air wing came amid an all-out army offensive that forced the rebels out of nearly all their strongholds in the north and left them on the brink of defeat in their quarter-century separatist war. The raid was an embarrassment for the government, which said two weeks ago that it had seized all the rebels' airstrips, effectively grounding their small force of light aircraft. However, military spokesman Brig. Udaya Nanayakkara said the failure to bomb any strategic targets was a defeat for the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam. The rebels had used a series of successful air attacks in the past to boost their morale and humiliate the government. “This is the end of the LTTE, that's all I can say,” Nanayakkara said. But the attack also showed that the rebels were not ready to surrender, despite a military offensive that swept them from their de facto capital of Kilinochchi last month and then pushed them out of the rest of their strongholds and into a shrinking sliver of territory along the northeast coast. The air raid started just after 9:30 P.M. The government immediately shut off all power in the capital, and searchlights crisscrossed the sky. Anti-aircraft fire rippled across the city as tracer rounds flew overhead and flares lit up the night. Anti-aircraft fire hit one of the planes, forcing it to dive into a tax office in the center of the city near the air force headquarters, said the air force spokesman, Wing Commander Janaka Nanayakkara. All the front windows of the high-rise building were shattered, and furniture inside was charred and splintered. “The army started firing, a loud explosion came from that building. Then I saw a big ball of fire,” said a security guard who works nearby and gave his name as Ariyatillake. Military officials at first said a rebel bomb had hit the building, but they later said they were mistaken and the explosion was caused by the crashing plane. The second rebel plane was shot down near an air force base in the town of Katunayake, close to the international airport north of Colombo, officials said.
