Sri Lanka bombs Tamil Tiger artillery positions

Sri Lanka’s military carried out airstrikes on Tamil rebel artillery positions today in the first air raid since failed peace talks in Switzerland, the Defence Ministry said.

The Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam rebels quickly accused the government of mounting a military campaign, a charge the military denied.

Separately, suspected Tamil rebels fatally shot a paramilitary guard in the North-East early today and a Tamil civilian was shot and killed in the Tamil city of Jaffna.

Military spokesman Brig. Prasad Samarasinghe said the air force had to “neutralise” artillery positions of the Tamil Tiger rebels after they fired at military camps in eastern Sri Lanka.

“We have taken the targets,” Samarasinghe said, indicating that the rebels’ firing positions were destroyed.

The rebels said Sri Lankan ground forces were also firing artillery at rebel-held areas in the east, both of which showed the military was planning an offensive against them.

“The pattern of firing and bombing are indicative of a large scale military offensive being planned by the Sri Lankan military,” the rebels said on their TamilNet website

The government’s Media Centre for National Security denied the charge and said the airstrike was limited to targets known to be rebel artillery bases.

Meanwhile, top rebel envoys returned to Sri Lanka earlier today from talks in Geneva, Switzerland.

The peace negotiations between the Sri Lankan government and rebel envoys ended fruitlessly, without even an agreement on when to talk again.

“They (rebels) are continuing with their terror tactics,” military spokesman Samarasinghe said about the incident in Trincomalee district where the rebels attacked a Home Guards post before dawn today.

The Home Guards, made up of local, pro-government residents with weapons training, are deployed to assist security forces at vulnerable points. Trincomalee is the site of a major Sri Lankan navy base.

The Tamil civilian was shot and killed in the Jaffna town by unidentified gunmen, residents said. The body of the victim was set on fire by the assailants. The motive behind the killing was not immediately known.

The talks, aimed at salvaging the 2002 cease-fire and halting more than two decades of conflict, failed after the government rejected a rebel demand to reopen a highway linking the ethnic Tamil-dominated northern Jaffna peninsula with the rest of the island nation.

But the government yesterday said it was willing to reopen the highway if the rebels halted their violence. The rebels have yet to respond.

The Tamil Tigers began fighting in 1983 for a separate homeland for ethnic Tamils in northern and eastern Sri Lanka, citing discrimination by the majority Sinhalese.

More than 65,000 people were killed in the conflict before the cease-fire. Another 2,000 people have been killed this year.