Two policemen died in a suspected Tamil Tiger mine attack in Sri Lanka on Wednesday, the third in as many days, raising to 21 the number of people killed in the latest wave of bombings, police said.
The policemen were on their way to Trincomalee to buy provisions for colleagues stationed further north of the main city in the eastern coastal district when they were ambushed.
“It is the Tigers who have carried out the attack,” a Trincomalee police official said referring to the the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE).
“Two men were killed on the spot and the other two in the truck were injured,” he said. “They have been taken to the Trincomalee hospital.”
The attack came as the United States, which banned the LTTE in October 1997, condemned the recent bombings against government forces and asked the rebels to resume talks with Colombo on saving their threadbare truce.
“The United States condemns in the strongest possible terms the recent terrorist attacks carried out by the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) against the armed forces of Sri Lanka,” the US embassy said.
It also condemned the killing of a pro-Tiger activist by a gunman believed to be supporting government forces on Friday.
On Tuesday a bus carrying sailors in the same district was blown up, killing 12 people and further dimming hopes for a new round of peace talks next week.
Seven more — five soldiers and two local aid workers — were killed in a similar blast in the northern peninsula of Jaffna on Monday.
Security had been stepped up in the island’s restive northern and eastern regions following Tuesday’s attack, officials said.
The latest blast came despite appeals by Sri Lanka’s peace broker Norway and the Scandinavian truce monitors for an end to the violence that has cast a doubt over ceasefire talks in Switzerland.
Officials involved in the peace initiative said the future of the April 19-21 truce talks could depend on a meeting the LTTE was due to have on Wednesday with Ulf Henricsson, the head of the truce monitoring mission.
Henricsson met with Sri Lankan military officials on Tuesday to discuss the ceasefire, the Sri Lanka Monitoring Mission said without giving details.
Both Colombo and the Tigers agreed during a first round of truce talks in February to scale down violence and uphold the ceasefire that came into force in February 2002.
However, the Tigers accuse the government of not delivering on a promise to disarm rival Tamil militants, including a breakaway faction of the LTTE, operating in the island’s east.
The government blames the Tigers for the spike in violence. Four previous peace attempts have ended in failure in Sri Lanka, where more than 60 000 people have died in three decades of ethnic bloodshed. – AFP