Tamils confined to homes after policeman hacked to death

Residents in Sri Lanka’s Tamil heartland were forbidden from leaving their homes today after a mob of angry Tamils hacked a top police officer to death and threw stones at military vehicles.

The curfew, imposed late yesterday on the entire Jaffna Peninsula, the home of most of the island’s 3.2 million Tamils, was expected to be lifted later today, said police spokesman Reins Pourer.