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Tigers launch artillery attacks

COLOMBO: The Sri Lankan military on Tuesday accused the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) of launching artillery attacks on Palaly and Kankasanthurai “areas” in the Jaffna peninsula but maintained that there was no casualty among troops who fired back in retaliation. Palaly houses a Sri Lankan Air Force base and Kankasanthurai has a harbour.

A statement by the military said a few artillery rounds had “fallen” and the situation was “taken under control” after security forces launched retaliatory attacks. There was no word from the LTTE on the incidents.

TamilNet, however, maintained that the army had launched “sustained artillery and multi-barrel rocket fire” towards Tamil Tiger controlled territory from Koaddai and Palaly.

“The sudden and intensive SLA [Sri Lanka Army] bombardment has raised fear among the residents of the northern peninsula that fighting may break out on the Front Defence Lines” the web site reported.

It said the shelling came a day after a Sri Lankan military delegation, including Defence Secretary Gothabaya Rajapaksa and the Commanders of the three armed forces services, visited the Jaffna peninsula.

It claimed that two days ago, the army had bombarded the Poonakari area with heavy artillery fire and that the armed forces had been conducting a series of military exercises in the peninsula in recent months.

Separately, the military and the LTTE accused each other of killing an aid worker of a foreign NGO and injuring another in Jaffna town and gunning down the brother of the Tamil National Alliance (TNA) MP from Batticaloa, S. Jeyananthamoorthy.

A local worker of the Danish Demining Group (DDG) identified as Sivasami Sritharan was shot dead by gunmen in the early hours of Monday. The NGO is engaged in de-mining operations in the conflict zone.

The brother of the Batticaloa parliamentarian was shot dead by assailants in Oaddamaavadi in Batticaloa on Monday. The military, while claiming that the MP and his wife narrowly escaped an assassination attempt by the Tigers in July, alleged that the TNA’s Jaffna parliamentarian, Nataraja Raviraj, and the Tamil intellectual Keetheshwaran Loganathan, were also murdered by the LTTE last year.

In another development, military law professionals from the U.S. Pacific Command, in partnership with the American embassy in Colombo, have hosted a military law exchange programme with the Sri Lankan Ministry of Defence to exchange ideas on ways to improve “transparency, accountability and human rights in military justice”.

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