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LTTE cadres kill Buddhist monk

B. Muralidhar Reddy

COLOMBO: A monk and a soldier of the Sri Lanka Army (SLA) and four cadres of the Tigers were killed in violence in different parts of the island nation on Sunday.

According to the military, suspected LTTE gunmen shot dead a Buddhist monk at Mahadivulwewa Stage-1, about 40 km north-east of Anuradhapura.

The monk, Hadungamuwe Nandarathene Thero, was the head priest of the "Sri Pabbattharamaya" Buddhist temple in Mahadivulwewa. Quoting eyewitnesses, the military said three LTTE gunmen who came on two motorcycles, shot dead the monk. It said that in May 1986, about 15-20 LTTE militants had walked into Mahadivulwewa Stage 20, a Sinhala village, and shot dead 20 villagers and set fire to 20 houses.

In other incidents, military troops on observation duties at the Forward Defence Lines (FDLs) at Periyathampane general area, intercepted an LTTE movement with small arms fire, killing four Tiger cadres on Saturday evening. In another incident, an army foot patrol confronted a group of LTTE militants in the area west of Vavuniya on Sunday in which a soldier was killed. "The sources also added that intercepted terrorist communication had revealed the terrorists too have suffered casualties in the retaliatory attacks by the army troopers", the military said.

In a related development, the Sri Lanka Government announced that it would resettle about 125,000 people displaced by fighting in the east. Government officials said the first batch of 4,000 Internally Displaced People (IDPs) will be moved on Monday to their homes in Vellaveli. However, a consortium of international relief agencies said the situation in the eastern district of Batticaloa was still tense and the resettlement was risky. "Military and civilian authorities have been registering IDPs in the southern divisions of Batticaloa in view of planned resettlement towards the western part of Batticaloa," the aid agencies said.

"However, the resettlement plan has not been presented yet and the humanitarian community fears that the lack of proper planning might put returnees in a situation where safety and dignity are not ensured in the villages".

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