(Revises toll, air raid)

By Ranga Sirilal

COLOMBO, June 4 (Reuters) - Suspected Tamil Tiger rebels blew up a rail track near the Sri Lankan capital on Wednesday, wounding at least 27 people, the military said, the second attack on the rail network in just over a week.

The bomb, planted along a portion of the tracks in Wellawatta, a suburb of Colombo, went off just as a train packed with commuters passed through. Two train carriages were slightly damaged.

"It is the LTTE who have done that and we have arrested a person who has connections with LTTE," said military spokesman Brigadier Udaya Nanayakkara, referring to the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam rebels.

The latest attack came just over a week after eight people were killed and 73 wounded when a bomb exploded on a train during rush hour in Colombo.

Doctors said 27 people were admitted to hospital in the latest blast. "All of them were out of danger," said Dr. Wilfred Kumarasiri, director at the Kalubovila Teaching Hospital.

The rebels, who are fighting for an independent state in the north and east, were not immediately available for comment but usually deny involvement in such attacks.

Violence in Sri Lanka has mounted as the government pursues a military offensive against the LTTE in their northern strongholds after evicting them from wide swathes of jungles in the east last year.

One Wednesday, the air force bombed rebel positions in the far north of the country, the military said, but gave no details.

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

More than 70,000 people have died in the conflict since 1983. (Additional reporting by Buddhika Weerasinghe;Editing by Sanjeev Miglani)

AlertNet news is provided by