Sri Lanka's highways minister and at least nine other people were killed on Sunday in a suspected suicide attack by Tamil Tiger rebels near Colombo, a security official said.

 "Minister Jeyaraj Fernandopulle is dead from the explosion," Laksman Hulugalla, director general of the media centre for national security, told Reuters.

The military said 10 people were killed and 25 injured by the explosion in the town of Weliveriya, 30 km (19 miles) from the capital, Colombo, where Fernandopulle had gone to flag off a marathon race.

Television footage showed a ball of fire moving toward the minister as he kicked off the race.

"It's a suicide attack, definitely by the LTTE," said a bomb squad official from the scene. The LTTE, who usually deny any involvement, were not immediately available for comment.

Fernandopulle, 55, is the second minister to have been killed since January when the minister for nation building, DM  Dassanayake, was killed in a roadside blast in the same district, Gampaha.

Foreign minister Lakshman Kadirgamar was the most senior government leader killed in recent years, shot dead at his home in Colombo by a suspected Tamil Tiger sniper in August 2005.

The latest attack came as the Sri Lankan military presses on with an offensive to retake the Tigers' northern stronghold. Nearly 60 rebels were killed in two days of gunbattles along the northern frontier, the government said earlier this week.

The Tigers are fighting for an independent state in the north and east of the island in a 25-year civil war that has killed an estimated 70,000 people.

In January the government called off a a tattered 2002 ceasefire, accusing the rebels of using it to regroup and re-arm, and vowed to fight them militarily.

Analysts say the military has the upper hand in the latest phase of the long-running war given superior air power, strength of numbers and swathes of terrain captured in the island's east. But they still see no clear winner on the horizon. - Reuters