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Deputy Chief of Sri Lankan Army assassinated

B. Muralidhar Reddy

Suicide bomber rams motorbike into General's vehicle

COLOMBO: A suspected member of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) assassinated the Deputy Chief of the Sri Lankan Army, Parami Kulatunga, along with three others and injured several persons on Monday morning.

The attack took place at 7.45 a.m. in Pannipitiya, 17 km from Colombo, as the General was headed for the Army Headquarters in his official vehicle. According to the police, the attacker, riding a motorbike, rammed into the car of Maj. Gen. Kulatunga and an escorting army pickup truck.

It was instant death for the General and his driver and a corporal with him. A civilian passer-by was also killed and a local bus in the vicinity was hit. Footage aired by local television channels showed the severed head of the suspected assassin close to the site of the suicide bombing.

President Mahinda Rajapakse denounced the killings as further example of the LTTE's concerted efforts to derail the peace process through acts of terror, and its disregard for the international community's repeated calls to cease all violence and acts of terrorism. In a special message, Mr. Rajapakse said, "This unabated violence by the LTTE should attract the opprobrium of the entire civilised world.

"It is a reminder to the international community, and to the Tamil people, that the LTTE remains an organisation dedicated to pursue violent means, especially the use of terror to achieve its objectives, which are far removed from the actual needs of the Tamil people."

He said the act of violence targeting a high ranking officer of the army, and the callous disregard for the safety of civilians in such attacks will not intimidate either civilians or the security forces, nor deter them from overcoming the LTTE and its terror. There was no word from the LTTE to the Government charges.

TamilNet said Sri Lanka has accused the LTTE of the suicide attack, "which comes in the wake of SLA [Sri Lankan Army] Deep Penetration Unit attacks, targeting senior LTTE commanders in Vanni."

It further said, "press reports today quoted political observers as saying that in the tit-for-tat killings going on in the `shadow war' which has escalated steadily for the past two years, the assassination of Maj. Gen. Kulatunga followed the killing of two top ranking LTTE military commanders, `Lt. Col.' Ramanan of Batticaloa and `Lt. Col.' Mahindi of Mannar, for which Tigers have blamed the Sri Lanka Army."

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