This Is Guernsey

Bridge 2 Sri Lanka founder Sarah Griffith with one of the people the charity has helped.

A GUERNSEY woman is back in Hikkaduwa after narrowly avoiding a suicide bomb in Colombo that killed nine people and injured 95.

Bridge 2 Sri Lanka charity founder Sarah Griffith was doing business in the country’s capital on Friday when a motorcyclist, thought to have been with separatist group the Tamil Tigers, rammed a bus carrying riot police about 300 metres away.

‘This type of attack is happening all the time in Sri Lanka and thousands of people are being killed in this senseless war,’ she said. Ms Griffith said she was a relatively calm person, but the events of that day were something she would never forget.

‘There was so much shouting and screaming and I have never been swept away so much with the way people were panicking. It was complete chaos and the adrenalin was really pumping.’ Ms Griffith and four other people had travelled to Colombo for meetings with officials to discuss freight and tax matters.

She thought one official was being pedantic and was initially annoyed that he had held the party up for about 10 minutes.

‘However, he might have saved our lives,’ she said.

The attacker struck further along the road the group was due to use to take a volunteer to the airport for a flight to Singapore.

Once they realised it had been a bomb attack, Ms Griffith ordered the driver to turn around and head for the Mount Lavinia, one of the area’s most expensive hotels on the outskirt of Colombo, where she knew they would be safe. ‘These people tend to target the military and politicians,’ she said.

The horror continued the next day when she saw pictures of the destruction in English-language newspapers.