Schools shut amid bomb fears in Sri Lanka

0 Comments | AFP, June, 2006

COLOMBO (AFP) — Several schools in the Sri Lankan capital Colombo have shut following fears that Tamil Tiger rebels may bomb them, officials and parents said.

School buses were turned away at key colleges while even some international schools, where mostly children of expatriates study, were also closed amid the bomb scare, officials said.

"There is panic, total panic," a government security official said. "It is the work of some pranksters who had been calling hospitals and warning that there would be bomb attacks against schools."

Parent Chandana Wijenaike said he did not send his daughter to Colombo's Museaus College as several other parents had telephoned him early morning saying they were not sending their children to school because of a bomb threat....