Escalating violence sparks civil war fears in Sri Lanka

Sri Lankan troops stormed a village church where about 200 Tamil civilians sought shelter today, shooting indiscriminately and then attacking fishermen in an assault that killed five people and injured 47 more, witnesses said.

The military immediately denied the accusations.

It blamed the killings in remote north-western Pesalai village on Tamil Tiger militants, who hours earlier had attacked a nearby navy base, setting off a naval and helicopter battle that killed six soldiers and up to 30 guerrillas.

The spiralling violence – which included the arrest near the capital, Colombo, of two suspected Tiger bombers who tried to kill themselves after their capture by swallowing cyanide – heightened fears that Sri Lanka could be returning to full-scale civil war.

The past few days have seen by far the worst violence since the government and Tigers signed an often-violated 2002 cease-fire.

The rebels, formally called the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam or LTTE, control large parts of northern and eastern Sri Lanka, and have been fighting for more than two decades to create a homeland for the country’s minority Tamils.

In a hospital in Mannar, near Pesalai, many villagers being treated for injuries gave near-identical accounts of security forces indiscriminately shooting into Our Lady of Victory Roman Catholic Church, and then opening fire in the village.

“We were all inside the church when the navy and army broke in and opened fire. A grenade was thrown inside through a window,” said Mariyadas Loggu, 46, who was being treated for hand injuries. “If this is what the people responsible for security do, where else can we go?”

Due to violence in the region, villages often shelter in churches in times of trouble, seeing them as safe havens.

One person died inside the church and four others were fatally shot while coming in from fishing, Loggu and a half-dozen other hospitalised villagers said.

An AP reporter at the Mannar hospital counted 47 people from the village injured in the violence.

The military rejected the villagers’ accusations.

“The LTTE has done it. We do not target civilians”, said Commander D.K.P. Dassanayake, the navy spokesman.

Government roadblocks sealed off Pesalai, and reporters were unable to enter after the violence.

Today’s naval battle killed at least six sailors and 25-30 rebels, Dassanayake said.

“We destroyed eight of the 11 boats that came for the attack,” said Dassanayake.

He said each boat usually carries three to four rebel fighters.

Three of the navy’s boats were also damaged, he said.

After the attack, the navy called in air force helicopters that fired on rebel boats, Dassanayake said.

The pro-rebel website TamilNet called the incident a clash between the Sea Tigers – the rebels’ naval wing – and the navy.

TamilNet said 30 civilians were wounded in the shooting, and hundreds of others have fled the area and sheltered in churches.

The alleged rebel navy attack came after Sri Lanka’s military unleashed two days strikes on Tiger positions Thursday and Friday, after a bus bombing killed 64 people.

The government blamed the Tigers for the bombing, the worst single act of violence since the cease-fire.

The rebels denied involvement, and said air and artillery strikes near a key rebel stronghold showed the military was on a war footing.