Blast rocks Sri Lanka capital, air raid kills youths

COLOMBO, Aug 14: Tamil Tigers today attacked, a Pakistan embassy convoy killing seven people, the Sri Lankan military said, and the two sides traded accusations over whether air raid victims were innocent teenagers or rebel fighters.

The bomb attack on the diplomatic convoy came hours after the Air Force attacked the grounds of a former orphanage, in a raid the Tamil rebels said killed 61 schoolgirls aged 15-18 and injured 155 as they were receiving first aid training.

The military dismissed the claim, saying its jets had bombed a rebel training camp and killed 50-60 Tiger fighters. The military posted a photograph on its Web site which it said depicted Tamil schoolgirls taking weapons training.

Nordic truce monitors said that at the scene they had seen the bodies of just 19 youths, both male and female, aged 17-20.

The United Nations Children's Fund said it had not had access to the dead, but that those injured were aged 16-19.

The incident came as the rebels and military fought artillery battles in the far north in the worst fighting since a 2002 truce which has given way to renewed civil war.

The blast in the capital, Colombo, was the second in a week.

Officials said it looked like a suicide attack.

Four military personnel and three civilians were killed in the explosion, which bomb squad officials said was caused by a fragmentation mine inside a three-wheeled taxi. Seventeen others were injured.

''Definitely it's an LTTE (Tamil Tiger) attack to the Pakistan ambassador's car but they missed and the backup vehicle got caught,'' a military spokesman said.

''It is perhaps because we support the (Sri Lankan) government,'' Pakistani High Commissioner Bashir Wali told Reuters. ''We are against terrorism everywhere. It is all in that context, I think.'' A defence analyst offered other theories.

''Pakistan has been providing military hardware to Sri Lanka for some time,'' he said, adding: ''I wouldn't rule out mistaken identity. It could be an opportunistic attack when they saw the military people in the car.''

The government brought the start of the school holidays forward two weeks to Tuesday, which teachers said was because of security fears. And South Africa's cricket team wants to pull out of a triangular series and return home, team sources said. The High Security Zone Residents Liberation Force, a presumed Tiger front group that says it wants the army out of civilian areas, said if the military targeted minority Tamils then bombs would explode in the majority Sinhalese south.

DEATH TOLL CLIMBING

Aid workers estimate around 100,000 people have been displaced during three weeks of fighting. Dozens are confirmed dead, and many fear the eventual death toll will be far higher.

Today the government accused the rebels of shelling civilian areas in the northern Jaffna peninsula. It said 88 troops had been killed in the area so far.

''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.'' He said the country's east was quiet but artillery rained down on Kayts island, just to the west of Jaffna town, and was being fired across a no-man's land that separates government from rebel territory around 32 km to the east.

Jaffna residents flocked to shops to stockpile food after the army briefly lifted a curfew. With no prospect of fresh supplies from the south, prices of basic goods were soaring.

''We are used to being displaced, but this time it came about so suddenly we were ill-prepared,'' said 50-year-old fisherman Ledil Amaldas, who fled his coastal village and is staying with a relative in Jaffna.

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

UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan was ''profoundly concerned'' and urged all sides to return to the negotiating table, allow aid agencies free access and let civilians leave contested areas, a spokesman said.

The blast in the capital shook buildings and the country's financial markets, with the Colombo stock market falling 2.4 per cent.

Reuters

Related Stories