KARADIYANARU: Sri Lankan authorities Saturday began clearing rubble and wreckage after 25 people were killed in the first major explosion since the end of a decades-long civil war.

Heavy earth-moving equipment was being brought to the village of Karadiyanaru, in the east of the island, as families of victims prepared for funerals.

"We are going to clear the site and see if there are any more bodies trapped under the wreckage of vehicles and buildings that were completely destroyed," a local relief official told AFP.

He said the death toll was officially put at 25 based on a body count, but investigators were working to establish if there were people unaccounted for after three containers of explosives stored at a police station blew up on Friday.

The explosion left a crater about 35 feet (10 metres) deep at the site of Karadiyanaru police station where a huge amount of dynamite had been stored for safe keeping.

The explosives had been intended for rock blasting by a Chinese company building roads in the former war zone.

Two Chinese workers were among the 25 people killed, according to the government.

Friday`s blast was the first major explosion in Sri Lanka since government forces ended their 37-year battle against Tamil Tiger rebels by wiping out the top guerrilla leadership in May last year.

The military said the cause of the blast did not look to be suspicious.

"We completely rule out sabotage. There is no threat to security in that area," military spokesman Ubaya Medawala told reporters in the capital Colombo on Friday evening.

Medawala initially gave the death toll as "over 60" but later revised it down to 25. He said 16 policemen, two Chinese contractors and seven Sri Lankan civilians were killed. Another 54 people were wounded.

Karadiyanaru is a fishing village that was previously under the control of the separatist Tamil Tiger group, which fought for more than three decades for a homeland for the Tamil ethnic group on the Indian Ocean island.

The civil war ended in May last year when government troops crushed the rebels in a military offensive that has since been dogged by war crimes allegations.

BDST: 1645 HRS, September 18, 2010