Sri Lankan monitors attacked

Attackers a grenade into a compound used by a European team monitoring Sri Lanka's shaky truce, damaging three vehicles, monitors and the police said yesterday. No injuries were reported. No one immediately claimed responsibility for the attack.

The explosion in the compound's parking area came hours after the Norwegian-led monitors said they would not rule out the Tamil Tiger rebels' involvement in recent attacks on government forces.

Sri Lankan police guarding the monitors' compound in Batticaloa, 220km east of the capital, Colombo, reported the blast on Friday night.

"There was a hand grenade lobbed at our office around midnight and it landed in a parking area and damaged three cars," said Helen Olafsdottir, spokeswoman for Sri Lanka Monitoring Mission.

Two were in a nearby building at the time of the blast, and it was not known who was behind the attack, she said.

The mission's 60 monitors come from Norway, Sweden, Denmark, Finland and Iceland.

They are overseeing the Norway-brokered 2002 cease-fire between government and the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam, or LTTE, who had fought since 1983 for a separate homeland for Sri Lanka's ethnic minority Tamils, claiming discrimination by the Sinhalese majority.

Peace started after the truce but stalled over postwar power-sharing disagreements, and about 70 government-armed personnel have been killed since Dec. 4 in a surge of violent attacks. The government blames the Tamil Tigers, who deny involvement.

Hours Friday's blast, the monitors also raised the possibility of the Tigers' involvement.

"It is safe to say that LTTE involvement cannot be ruled out and we find the LTTE's indifference to these attacks worrying," the monitors said in a written statement.

The Tamil Tigers could did not immediately comment on the attack or the monitors' remarks but pro-rebel Web sites reported the incident.

On Thursday, nine soldiers were killed in an attack on a convoy in the country's north. The monitors called the killings "yet another blow to the cease-fire agreement," and said if the violence continues, "the cease-fire agreement will be over."

Meanwhile, a military convoy narrowly escaped an attempted anti-personnel mine attack by suspected Tamil Tigers Friday in northeastern Sri Lanka, said military spokesman Brigadier Athula Jayawardane.

Two were triggered to explode but failed to explode when they as troops returned to their base in Trincomalee, 230km northeast of the capital, Colombo, after visiting their families, Jayawardane said.

A female rebel cadre suspected to have planted the mines was later arrested.

Sri Lanka's 19-year civil war claimed 65,000 lives and displaced 1.6 million people.