SRI LANKA: Car bomb explodes killing two, as fighting goes on between military and Tamil Tigers, and refugees flee

A car bomb exploded in Colombo on Tuesday (August 8, 2006), killing two people, including a three-year-old boy. Bomb squad officials said a magnetic bomb had been fixed to the rear of a minivan carrying a minority Tamil politician opposed to the Tamil Tiger rebels, and detonated in a residential quarter of the capital. Sivardasan, a senior member of the Eelam Peoples' Democratic Party (EPDP) -- which is allied to President Mahinda Rajapakse's government -- survived. His bodyguard was killed. At the scene of the blast, an elderly man wept next to the towel-draped body of a child lying on the tarmac. A taxi driver spoke of his lucky escape. "While I was driving my taxi I heard an explosion. I just stopped the vehicle and ran. Then I saw this van on fire. Then my taxi also caught fire. I ran further away," Velaudan Morgan said. The attack came as government howitzers pounded Tamil Tiger positions near the north-eastern port of Trincomalee as fighting continued in the area for a 14th day. Suspected Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) rebels shot dead an airman in Trincomalee, and two police commandos were killed further south in Ampara district. The army said operations were also continuing south of Trincomalee where the government is trying to regain control of rebel-held water supplies, the dispute that kick-started the first ground fighting since a 2002 ceasefire. Fearing reprisals from Muslims, thousands of Tamils from the town of Mutur, a town caught in the crossfire between the troops and rebels, fled their refugee camps in the strife-torn east of the country. "I am from a Tamil village in Mutur. When we coming here we were stoned by some people, shells started falling in the village as we fled. We left the first refugee camp because we feared that the muslims would attack us," said one refugee, one of the many hundreds crowded into schools and other makeshift refugee centres in Trincomalee. Nordic truce monitors and diplomats are exasperated by the government's decision to continue the military campaign despite a Tiger offer to open a sluice. The rebels have already pulled back to their original positions after the first ground battle since a 2002 truce. Norwegian peace facilitator Jon Hanssen-Bauer who is in Trincomalee in an effort to save the ceasefire agreement called for an immediate de-escalation of the violence, saying it had created a major humanitarian crisis in the east. "The problem is always that this fighting can go out of control and may easily escalate into something that is very difficult to control," he said. The government says the only option is for the Tigers to vacate the area, and analysts suspect President Mahinda Rajapakse is pushing on as either a concession to hardline Marxist and Buddhist monk political allies who hate the Tigers or as a matter of government pride. Overnight, aid workers transported the bodies of 17 local colleagues found slain in the eastern battle-ravaged town of Mutur, where they had been working on post-tsunami projects, to Trincomalee. Most had been shot in the head, execution style, Jeevan Thiyagaraja, head of the Consortium of Humanitarian agencies said. "It is my understanding that we found 15 bodies lying face down. All seems to have been shot dead in the same manner. The report I received is that they have been shot at close range" he said. In Paris, Action Against Hunger (ACF) Executive Director Benoit Miribel said 17 bodies had been found. "Our team has just recovered 17 bodies at the ACF "Action Contre la Faim" base at Mutur. We thought that there were only 15, but there are 17 dead. They're being taken to Trincomalee where we will have an enquiry, an autopsy, to find out how they were killed. It would seem that it was rocket explosions or bullets to the head. We don't know. There are several versions. Perhaps some were killed by bullets and others by bombs," he said. The Executive Director said ACF operations would go on stand-by, but work in the conflict zones would continue. The ACF team helped rebuild after the 2004 tsunami. Rumours circulated for several days that the staff were dead, but with the town practically cut off it was not confirmed until the first aid mission found them on Sunday (August 6) on the floor of their office wearing ACF T-shirts. Pro-rebel website Tamilnet blamed the government for the killings, while the army pointed the finger at the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE), who have fought for an ethnic Tamil homeland for two decades.

ITN Source | August 8, 2006

Tags:. .dispute. .diplomats. .bullets. .rear. .ethnic