SL:Tigers say air strike kills 43 girls

Colombo, Aug 14: Sri Lanka's Tamil Tiger rebels accused the government of bombing an orphanage in rebel territory today and killing 43 schoolgirls soon after a suspected Tiger front group threatened attacks in the country's south.

The government -- yesterday called on Tiger fighters to simply surrender -- accused the rebels of shelling civilian areas in the northern Jaffna peninsula, saying it feared fatalities as the worst fighting since a 2002 ceasefire raged on.

A military source confirmed air strikes had been launched on rebel territory but had no details of targets hit or casualties.

With contact with the conflict-hit areas limited, the rebel report could not be immediately confirmed.

''The Sri Lankan air force bombed the premises of an orphanage where schoolgirls were studying first aid,'' Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) military spokesman Rasiah Ilanthiraiyan said. ''Forty-three ... students were killed and 60 wounded.'' The government said civilian casualties were also likely around the Jaffna peninsula, where the LTTE over-ran government forward positions on Saturday, although the army says they had since been repulsed.

''They have mingled with civilians and are calling artillery fire onto the areas of the security forces,'' said Major Upali Rajapakse of the National Security Centre. ''It is falling in and around civilian areas. There has to be civilian dead.'' The pro-rebel Web site www.tamilnet.com said 15 civilians were killed when army rockets and shells hit a church, but there was no independent confirmation.

The High Security Zone Residents Liberation Force (HSZRLF), a presumed Tiger front group that says it wants the military out of civilian areas, said if the military targeted minority Tamils then bombs would explode in the majority Sinhalese south.

''We regret to inform that the HSZRLF's Central Committee has given orders to all cadres stationed across the island to carry out attacks against civilian targets in southern Sri Lanka if Sri Lankan armed forces continue to massacre innocent unarmed civilians in the Northeast,'' it said in a faxed statement.

The HSZRLF claimed responsibility for previous attacks on troops in the north, and proclaimed a ceasefire in early 2006 when the Tigers went to peace talks before claiming more attacks in April.

Analysts say it is clearly a Tiger tool.

Many of Sri Lanka's most prominent Tamils come from Jaffna -- including shadowy rebel leader Velupillai Prabhakaran -- and analysts say the Tigers are bent on eventually capturing a town that they have controlled in previous phases of a war that has killed more than 65,000 people since 1983.

The Tigers are furious at President Mahinda Rajapakse's outright rejection of their demands for a separate ethnic homeland for Tamils in the north and east.

Reuters