Lanka vows to continue offensive, probe increase

TRINCOMALEE, Sri Lanka, Aug 11: Sri Lanka's military vowed today to push on with an offensive to win control of a water supply from the Tamil Tigers, as demands for an independent probe into the slaughter of 17 aid staff grew.

There were no clashes reported early today but the military said an army camp was wrecked overnight when an artillery gun accidentally exploded and ignited an arms dump at one of the government's main strategic gun lines.

Officials said three troops were injured in the blasts, but said there were no fatalities as feared late yesterday.

''The operation to defend the water continues,'' said Major Upali Rajapakse, senior coordinator at the National Security media centre.

The government says it will not halt operations until it controls a disputed sluice and an irrigation reservoir that feeds it. The Tigers say the land is theirs, and say continued army attacks are an effective declaration of war.

Army artillery and air force jets pounded rebel positions in the east yesterday as ambulances ferried dozens of wounded troops to hospital and the military moved tanks, munitions and fresh soldiers to the battlefront.

The Tigers said yesterday more than 50 civilians were killed and 200 wounded in their territory from army shelling.

Doctors said six troops were killed and more than 50 wounded during an abortive push to capture the sluice.

The Tigers have long demanded a separate homeland for ethnic Tamils in the north and east but President Mahinda Rajapakse has ruled this out. The rebels say any return to stalled peace talks is a distant prospect.

GOVERNMENT BLOCKING AID

Aid groups accuse the government of forcing civilians to flee Tiger areas by shelling and deliberately blocking aid. ''The military and government are blocking the flow of aid into Tiger areas which is a violation of the ceasefire,'' Jeevan Thiagarajah of aid umbrella body the Consortium for Humanitarian Agencies said late on Thursday. ''We can't reach people in need.'' The government is also under pressure to allow independent experts take part in a probe into the execution-style killing of 17 local staff of international aid group Action Contre La Faim. Some relatives of the dead blame the army for the killings.

''There have been far too many cases where the government said it would bring perpetrators to justice and then the process stalled,'' Brad Adams, Asia director of US-based Human Rights Watch, said in a statement.

''International participation is crucial for the investigation to be considered credible,'' he added. ''If the Sri Lankan government is serious, it will establish an independent commission to make sure such atrocities don't happen again.'' Australia has sent forensic experts to the island to help.

More than 30,000 people who fled the ravaged Muslim town of Mutur, the site of the aid worker massacre and days of fierce fighting, are now crammed into unhygienic camps in the government-held town of Kantale, and thousands more in Tiger territory are fleeing south to escape shelling.

Analysts and diplomats fear the present campaign will drag on, effectively meaning a resumption of a two-decade civil war halted by a ceasefire in 2002.

REUTERS

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