Lankan rebels ambush army bus, 9 hurt

COLOMBO, July 19: Tamil Tiger rebels ambushed an army bus in Sri Lanka's northern Jaffna peninsula today, wounding nine servicemen, the military said.

The attack comes after the suspected Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam rebels killed three people and wounded 23 others on Monday and yesterday in two similar attacks in the island's north and east.

''An army bus was hit by a Claymore mine on the Jaffna peninsula,'' said military spokesman Brigadier Prasad Samarasinghe.

Army sources said seven soldiers and two officers were injured in the attack.

The attacks are the latest in a surge of violence that has killed more than 700 people so far this year and which many fear could rupture a strained 2002 ceasefire and rekindle a two-decade civil war.

Many Tamil Jaffna residents resent what they see as an army occupation by the majority Sinhalese south, which has fenced off large swathes of agricultural land as high-security zones -- preventing thousands of displaced people returning home.

But while hundreds of thousands fled the peninsula to avoid fighting in the 1990s, many people say they are sick and tired of being displaced by a protracted conflict that has killed more than 65,000 people since 1983 and refuse to move again, even if it costs them their lives.

REUTERS