Sri Lanka attack kills 45 Tamils

AT least 45 Tamils were killed and 125 wounded yesterday when government forces fired artillery and rocket launchers toward a Tamil Tiger rebel-held region in eastern Sri Lanka, a senior rebel official said.

Seevaratnam Puleedevan, who heads the rebels’ Peace Secretariat, said 125 people were also wounded, some of them seriously.

He said the victims killed in Batticaloa district were civilians who had sought refuge in a school after a previous battle between government troops and the guerrillas.

Yesterday’s attack was the second-worst in terms of Tamil civilian casualties since the signing of a truce in 2002. On August 14, an air raid allegedly killed 61 Tamil girls in the rebel stronghold Kilinochchi. At the time, the government said it had proof that the site was a rebel base, although rebels said the victims were school girls undergoing first aid training.