Sri Lankan air force continues airstrikes on Tamil rebels

Sri Lankan air force jets and artillery pounded Tamil Tiger rebel positions in the country’s north and east for a second day today, peace monitors said ahead of a mass funeral for 64 people killed a bus bombing blamed on the insurgents.

The Tigers said the airstrikes near a key rebel stronghold showed that the government was on a war footing, while the country’s president said he remained committed to the country’s 2002 cease-fire accord, despite yesterday’s bus attack, the worst violence since the truce.

Air force jets dropped bombs and the army lobbed artillery shells into the area around the northern town of Kilinochchi, said Thorfinnur Omarsson, the spokesman for the Nordic mission monitoring the oft-violated 2002 truce.

Omarsson said that throughout yesterday and early today Sri Lankan soldiers and sailors had also shelled Tiger bases near the eastern ports of Batticaloa and Trincomalee. Earlier reports indicated the government attacks were limited to rebel-held areas in the north.

“We don’t know if this is just a limited response or if it might be a move to inflict real damage,” on the rebels, Omarsson said.

Tiger leader Seevaratnam Puleedevan said at least eight bombs had been dropped near Kilinochchi today, although he could not provide casualty figures.

“I think the Sri Lankan government, by launching the air raids, is showing that they are ready for war,” he said.

“We are assessing the ground situation and our Central Command will take appropriate action.”

Dangerously tense relations between the rebels and the government deteriorated further yesterday when suspected insurgents triggered hidden explosives aimed at a bus in a predominantly ethnic Sinhalese area, killing 64 people in the worst violence since the truce.

Within hours, the Sri Lankan air force began retaliatory attacks on positions controlled by the rebels, formally known as the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam, or LTTE.

A top defence analyst said the air raids were intended to be a show of strength by the government, and as retaliation.

“Probably the attacks are designed to show the rebels that the government won’t take things lying down,” said Harry Goonetilleke, a retired air marshal of Sri Lankan air force.

“The attacks are also kind of retaliation … mainly aimed at probably to show the LTTE that they will not get away,” he said.

Regardless, Sri Lanka’s president insisted he remains committed to peace with the Tamil Tigers, despite the bus attack.

“We will not let this incident, however barbaric it is, sabotage the peace process. We are deeply committed to the peace process,” president Mahinda Rajapakse was quoted as saying by state-run Daily News .

With peace talks largely abandoned, the bus attack edged the tropical island nation off India’s southern tip further toward all-out war in a conflict that killed 65,000 people before the truce.

The dead in the bus blast in Kabithigollewa included at least 15 children. At least 78 people were wounded in the attack.

Today, the northern town was preparing to cremate the victims in a mass funeral that the government was paying for, said a presidential aid, Chandrapala Liyanage.

The rebels, a well-armed movement that began fighting in 1983 to create an independent homeland for the ethnic Tamil minority, denied responsibility for the attack. They suggested it was done by shadowy forces they accused of trying to create unrest.

But Sri Lanka’s government, dominated by the majority Sinhalese, insisted the rebels were responsible.

“This is a barbaric act of the LTTE,” said government spokesman Keheliya Rambukwella. “Their aim is to provoke a backlash.”

The bus was blown up with a pair of land mines hung from a tree and detonated by remote control, the army said. Rigging bombs to trees or bicycles is a common rebel tactic, so the ground does not absorb much of the blast, officials say.

In Washington, State Department spokesman Sean McCormack said the United States condemned the attack and called for resumed negotiations. “This vicious attack bears all the hallmarks of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam,” and violates the cease-fire agreement, he said.