/ 27 April 2006

Sri Lankan peace deal in danger

Mine attacks killed two navy sailors and wounded two commandos in northern Sri Lanka on Thursday in the latest in a barrage of violence that is posing the biggest danger yet to the country’s four-year-old ceasefire.

Meanwhile, police found five headless corpses near the capital, Colombo, and said they were investigating whether the deaths are linked to the recent upsurge in fighting with Tamil rebels.

This week’s bloodshed, including two days of government air strikes against rebel positions, threatens to wreck a 2002 truce that ended two decades of fighting between the government and rebels seeking a separate state in the north of the island.

While both sides in the conflict and the European team overseeing the agreement say the ceasefire still holds, analysts predict that more violence in the coming days could lead to its total collapse.

The Tamil Tiger rebel group says the air strikes on Tuesday and Wednesday near the north-eastern port of Trincomalee killed a dozen people and forced 40 000 people — mostly ethnic Tamils — to flee their homes.

The chief ceasefire monitor, Ulf Henricsson of Sweden, travelled on Thursday to those areas to inspect damage caused by the air strikes and meet with local rebel leaders, spokesperson Helen Olafsdottir said. She gave no further details.

The government blamed both of Thursday’s mine attacks on the rebels.

The two sailors were killed when a mine exploded as they rode on a motorcycle on the Kayts islet in northern Jaffna Peninsula, the navy’s media unit said.

Earlier, two members of a government commando unit formed to help the military in its battle against Tigers were wounded in a mine attack on a fortified truck in north-western Mannar district, the defence ministry said.

The two wounded commandos were taken to a hospital. The extent of their injuries was not immediately known.

The headless male corpses were found in two separate spots at a rubber plantation in Awissawella, a predominantly ethnic Sinhalese area about 35km east of Colombo, said Deputy Inspector General of Police Nevil Wijesinghe. Many Tamils work at the plantation.

“There is no way to identify the bodies. Four are completely naked and one has only underwear,” Wijesinghe said.

He said they were likely killed somewhere else and then dumped at the plantation.

“We are investigating if the deaths are linked to the ethnic violence or [if] it is a gang war,” he said.

The defence ministry said no new strikes were launched early on Thursday following two days of air attacks that were the government’s biggest military operation since 2002.

Those strikes were ordered hours after an ethnic Tamil suicide bomber targeted the top government military commander in Colombo, wounding the officer and killing nine other people. They also came in response to Tamil rebel attacks on navy ships, the military said.

Military spokesperson Brigadier Prasad Samarasinghe said the only highway linking the south with the north — blocked by the government on Wednesday due to security concerns — reopened on Thursday.

The rebels, formally known as the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE), said 40 000 people, almost all Tamils, have fled their homes in the north-east and that the rebel movement would seek to provide them shelter. Twelve people were killed by the strikes, the group said.

There was no way of immediately verifying the claims.

“This terror atmosphere that has been created throughout the Tamil homeland has shattered the Tamil people,” the rebels said in a statement. “LTTE had protected Tamil people … for many years. Today, Tamil people are seeking and expecting protection from our movement.”

Despite violations on both sides, the European monitoring team said the accord still stands.

“Certainly, we still have a valid ceasefire. No one has abrogated it,” Henricsson said on Wednesday. However, he said that “what is going on is a serious violation of the agreement”.

At least 65 000 people were killed in the two-decade civil war. The 2002 Norway-brokered truce halted large-scale fighting, but disputes over post-war power-sharing have hindered peace talks, and sporadic violence has raised tensions in recent months. — Sapa-AP

Associated Press writer Krishan Francis contributed to this report from Colombo