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.

The violence was sparked yesterday when a soldier’s gun accidentally discharged while he was trying to get a haircut at a barber shop just outside the town of Jaffna, 186 miles north of the capital Colombo, police said.

The bullet killed an employee, and the soldier was arrested.

Furious residents on Thursday burned tires, stoned military vehicles and seized police Superintendent Charles Wijewardene – who arrived to investigate the incident. His body was later found lying on the street, covered with stab wounds.

He was the senior most police offcer to be killed since the government and Tamil rebels signed a cease-fire three years ago.

Jaffna is the scene of two decades of fighting between government troops and Tamil Tiger rebels.

The guerrillas want an independent homeland for Tamils, claiming discrimination by the majority Sinhalese.

Despite strains, both sides have observed a Norway-brokered cease-fire signed in February 2002.

The rebels complain the heavy military presence in Jaffna has hampered the resettlement of Tamils displaced by the civil war.