Unidentified gunmen yesterday stormed the home of a Tamil parliamentary candidate who was allied to a renegade rebel leader, killing him and one of his relatives, police said.
Another relative was seriously wounded in the attack in the eastern town of Batticaloa, police spokesman Rienzie Perera said.
Rajan Sathiyamoorthy of the Tamil National Alliance was shot at point-blank range and declared dead after he was taken to a hospital, Perera said.
Supporters of the Tamil Tiger rebel movement are running as candidates of the mainstream Tamil National Alliance. Party leaders could become kingmakers after Friday's vote if the results -- as expected -- do not conclusively favor either of the country's two main political blocs.
However, the Tamil alliance has been in crisis since a split in rebel ranks in early March. A powerful Tiger leader broke away from the main guerrilla group with about 40 percent of its fighting force.
A policeman in Batticaloa said on condition of anonymity that Sathiyamoorthy was a staunch supporter of the breakaway leader, Vinayagamoorthy Muralitharan.
Seven of the eight Tamil National Alliance candidates running in Batticaloa are believed to support Muralitharan. Many of them have complained of anonymous telephone threats urging them to withdraw from the election, the policeman said. The pro-Tiger TamilNet Web site referred to Sathiyamoorthy as a "close confidante" of Muralitharan.
The incident took place just four days after the Tamil Tigers warned Muralitharan's cadre and supporters to "keep away from him." Muralitharan has been expelled from the Tiger group and branded a traitor.
The rebel split, which has raised fears of renewed fighting that could draw in the Sri Lankan army, comes on top of a power struggle between the country's president and prime minister that has prompted Friday's election.
Political violence has spiked in recent days in Sri Lanka, though it remains far beneath the country's last election, in 2001, when dozens of people were killed in political attacks.
Yesterday's shooting was the third in three days, and the second in that area. It took place amid heightened police and army presence in Batticaloa, about 220km east of the capital, Colombo.
"Police have been put on red alert," said Colonel Sumeda Perera, a military spokesman, with roadblocks and spot checks increased in the region.
The Tigers are suspects in at least one other shooting, of a university professor believed to support the dissident rebel leader. No arrests had been made so far.
On Monday, Muralitharan's spokesman, Varathan, blamed the Tigers' northern-based leadership for the professor's shooting and one other attempted murder, and predicted more such violence.
The killings took place hours before campaigning for the decisive poll drew to a close.
The April 2 election is being fought mainly on the issue of who can best lead the government's peace negotiations: President Chandrika Kumaratunga or her rival, Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe.
FORUM: The Solomon Islands’ move to bar Taiwan, the US and others from the Pacific Islands Forum has sparked criticism that Beijing’s influence was behind the decision Tuvaluan Prime Minister Feletei Teo said his country might pull out of the region’s top political meeting next month, after host nation Solomon Islands moved to block all external partners — including China, the US and Taiwan — from attending. The Pacific Islands Forum (PIF) leaders’ meeting is to be held in Honiara in September. On Thursday last week, Solomon Islands Prime Minister Jeremiah Manele told parliament that no dialogue partners would be invited to the annual gathering. Countries outside the Pacific, known as “dialogue partners,” have attended the forum since 1989, to work with Pacific leaders and contribute to discussions around
END OF AN ERA: The vote brings the curtain down on 20 years of socialist rule, which began in 2005 when Evo Morales, an indigenous coca farmer, was elected president A center-right senator and a right-wing former president are to advance to a run-off for Bolivia’s presidency after the first round of elections on Sunday, marking the end of two decades of leftist rule, preliminary official results showed. Bolivian Senator Rodrigo Paz was the surprise front-runner, with 32.15 percent of the vote cast in an election dominated by a deep economic crisis, results published by the electoral commission showed. He was followed by former Bolivian president Jorge “Tuto” Quiroga in second with 26.87 percent, according to results based on 92 percent of votes cast. Millionaire businessman Samuel Doria Medina, who had been tipped
Outside Havana, a combine belonging to a private Vietnamese company is harvesting rice, directly farming Cuban land — in a first — to help address acute food shortages in the country. The Cuban government has granted Agri VAM, a subsidiary of Vietnam’s Fujinuco Group, 1,000 hectares of arable land in Los Palacios, 118km west of the capital. Vietnam has advised Cuba on rice cultivation in the past, but this is the first time a private firm has done the farming itself. The government approved the move after a 52 percent plunge in overall agricultural production between 2018 and 2023, according to data
ELECTION DISTRACTION? When attention shifted away from the fight against the militants to politics, losses and setbacks in the battlefield increased, an analyst said Recent clashes in Somalia’s semi-autonomous Jubaland region are alarming experts, exposing cracks in the country’s federal system and creating an opening for militant group al-Shabaab to gain ground. Following years of conflict, Somalia is a loose federation of five semi-autonomous member states — Puntland, Jubaland, Galmudug, Hirshabelle and South West — that maintain often fractious relations with the central government in the capital, Mogadishu. However, ahead of elections next year, Somalia has sought to assert control over its member states, which security analysts said has created gaps for al-Shabaab infiltration. Last week, two Somalian soldiers were killed in clashes between pro-government forces and