President Chandrika Kumaratunga broke down as doctors battled to save her Foreign Minister Lakshman Kadirgamar after he was shot, an official said on Saturday as Sri Lanka woke up to its latest political killing, Reuters reported. Television anchors wore white, the traditional colour of mourning, and shocked Sri Lankans queued up to buy newspapers reporting the minister's assassination. Kadirgamar, an Oxford-educated lawyer, never contested an election and never addressed a rally in a decade-long political career. He was gunned down by a suspected Tamil Tiger rebel sniper at his home in Colombo on Friday, spurring fears of a return to a civil war on hold since a 2002 ceasefire. "It was such a shock, I am still recovering. He was undoubtedly Sri Lanka's best statesman ever," said Shanthini Anthony, a 32-year old university lecturer, who like Kadirgamar is from Sri Lanka's minority Tamil community. Kadirgamar was instrumental in getting the Tigers outlawed as a terrorist organisation by the United States and Britain and was long seen as a prime target. A team of over 100 elite commandos and soldiers stood guard around him everywhere he went. It was not immediately clear how his killer found a window. "I was absolutely shocked. There was this business of him being a target, but I never expected this to happen," lamented Dr. D.A.A. Perera as he read the morning newspaper at a kiosk. Kumaratunga cried as surgeons at Colombo's National Hospital tried to save Kadirgamar's life, a junior minister said on condition of anonymity. --mor 1528 Local Time 1228 GMT
