COLOMBO, Sri Lanka - A rebel suicide bomber attacked a procession of Muslims celebrating a religious holiday in southern Sri Lanka on Tuesday, killing 14 people and critically wounding a government minister, officials said.
  
Officials blamed the Tamil Tigers for the blast, saying the rebels had grown desperate in the face of a relentless government offensive that has brought them to the brink of defeat after more than a quarter century of civil war.

The bomber appeared to have targeted six ministers as they led a procession toward a mosque in the town of Akuressa to celebrate Mawlid, which commemorates the Prophet Mohammed's birthday.

Television footage showed men in white robes and caps slowly parading down the street before the blast sent them running in all directions. Charred, twisted bodies filled the street, their clothes nearly incinerated by the explosion just outside the mosque compound's gates.

"I heard a huge sound, and then I saw people had fallen everywhere. They were covered with blood and flesh, and the wounded people were screaming," Ahamed Nafri, 29, said by telephone from the hospital in the nearby town of Matara.

Police and bystanders were seen lifting the badly bleeding Minister of Posts and Telecommunications Mahinda Wijesekara into a van.

Aruna Jayasekera, a doctor at Matara hospital, said Wijesekera was in critical condition and had been airlifted to the capital for surgery to remove "blood and foreign objects" from his brain.

Another 41 people wounded in the blast were being treated in Matara, he said.

The blast came as government forces stood poised to rout the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam from their last stronghold in northeastern Sri Lanka after a 20-month offensive.

A top health official in the war zone said at least 49 civilians were killed and hundreds more wounded in new fighting between the government and the rebels.

Dr. Thurairaja Varatharajah said 279 wounded were brought to the makeshift hospital he runs in the area by the afternoon Tuesday, and 43 of them died because of lack of adequate care.

He said another six bodies were brought to the hospital's morgue.