S Lanka to exhume aid workers' bodies in new probe

COLOMBO, Oct 14 (Reuters) Sri Lankan authorities will exhume next week bodies of 15 aid workers massacred in the northeast of the country in August to try and establish who killed them, their French employer said today.

The 15 were among 17 mainly Tamils who worked for Paris-based voluntary group Action Contre la Faim (ACF) and were found killed in execution-style in their office compound in Muttur town after a battle in the area between the army and Tamil Tiger rebels.

The bodies would be exhumed a second time on Wednesday and brought to Colombo, where bodies of the remaining two have been kept, for a new autopsy in the presence of international observers, ACF said in a statement.

An earlier autopsy was inconclusive.

''The bodies should be transferred to Colombo the same day ...

Australian experts are expected in Colombo next week to be present at the post mortem, principally as advisers and observers,'' the ACF statement said.

Nordic monitors of the tattered truce between the Sri Lankan army and Tamil Tiger rebels have formally accused government soldiers of being behind the Muttur killings.

The government denies this, and officials have accused the monitors of being biased in favour of the rebels. The inquest began in Muttur but has since been transferred twice.

The aid agency said the the massacre was the worst attack on humanitarian workers since a suicide bombing of the UN headquarters in Baghdad in August 2003 killed 22 UN staff.

Violence has escalated in Sri Lanka as the rebels and the government have stepped up attacks on each other, threatening to derail planned peace talks in Geneva on Oct 28-29.

Reuters DKB GC1200