45 Tamils die in Sri Lanka attacks
At least 45 Tamils were killed and 125 wounded today when government forces fired artillery and rocket launchers toward a Tamil Tiger rebel-held region in eastern Sri Lanka, a senior rebel official said.
“It was a big attack and we have 45 dead,” Seevaratnam Puleedevan, who heads the rebels’ Peace Secretariat told The Associated Press by satellite phone. Puleedevan said 125 people were also wounded, some of them seriously.
He identified the victims killed in Batticaloa district as Tamil civilians who had sought refuge in a school after a previous battle between government troops and the guerrillas.
Today’s attack was the second-worst in terms of Tamil civilian casualties since the signing of a truce in 2002. On August 14, an air raid allegedly killed 61 Tamil girls in the rebel stronghold Kilinochchi. At the time, the government said it had proof that the site was a rebel base, although rebels said the victims were school girls undergoing first aid training.
The worst attack suffered by the Sri Lankan military was on October 16, when a rebel suicide bomber rammed an explosives-packed truck into a military bus convoy in central Sri Lanka, killing at least 95 sailors and wounding more than 150.
Muthulingam Atchuthan, a physician at a local hospital, said he was told of a “massive incident” and dispatched 10 ambulances and a bus to recover casualties from the Batticaloa attack.
Military spokesman, Brig. Samarasinghe said exchange of artillery had been continuing in the area for the last few days. “This morning, they (rebels) intensified their artillery attack, five of our soldiers were also wounded. We also retaliated to their attacks,” he said.
Samarasinghe said he was not aware of the casualties in the rebel-held area and claimed the rebels were using civilians as human shields.
Sri Lanka Monitoring Mission, a group of foreigners overseeing the 2002 cease-fire, has said 1,076 civilians have been killed in violence in Sri Lanka since early this year.
Helen Olafsdottir, acting spokeswoman for the mission, said a group of monitors were on their way to investigate Wednesday’s incident. But she refused to comment further.
Also today, suspected rebels killed a Sri Lankan security guard in an attack on a government post in the northern district of Vavuniya, Samarasinghe said.
The victim was a member of the “home guards,” made up of pro-government civilian residents who have weapons training and help security forces at vulnerable points.
Vavuniya is the last government-controlled town before rebel-held territory in the island nation’s north.
Samarasinghe said the military, acting on a tip yesterday, found and defused a 22-pound a mine in the northern Jaffna peninsula, which he said the Tigers intended to use.
The Tamil Tigers, officially called the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam, have been fighting since 1983 for a separate homeland for ethnic Tamils in the north and east of Sri Lanka, citing discrimination by the majority Sinhalese. More than 65,000 people were killed before a 2002 cease-fire.
