Mine attacks killed two navy sailors and wounded two commandos in northern Sri Lanka yesterday in the latest in a barrage of violence posing the biggest danger yet to the country's four-year-old ceasefire.
This week's bloodshed, including two days of government air strikes against Tamil rebel positions, threatens to wreck a 2002 truce that ended two decades of fighting between the government and rebels seeking a separate state in the north of the island.
While both sides in the conflict and the European team overseeing the agreement say it still holds, analysts predict that more violence in the coming days could lead to its total collapse.
The Tamil Tiger rebel group says the airstrikes on Tuesday and Wednesday near the northeastern port of Trincomalee killed a dozen people and forced 40,000 people -- mostly ethnic Tamils -- to flee their homes.
Damage inspection
The chief ceasefire monitor, Ulf Henricsson of Sweden, traveled yesterday to those areas to inspect damages caused by the airstrikes and to meet with local rebel leaders, spokeswoman Helen Olafsdottir said. She gave no further details.
The government blamed both of yesterday's mine attacks on the rebels.
The two sailors were killed when a mine exploded as they rode on a motorcycle on the Kayts islet in northern Jaffna Peninsula, the navy's media unit said.
Earlier, two members of a government commando unit formed to help the military in its battle against Tigers were wounded in a mine attack on a fortified truck in northwestern Mannar district, the Defense Ministry said.
The two wounded commandos were taken to a hospital. The extent of their injuries was not immediately known.
The Defense Ministry said no new strikes were launched yesterday following two days of air attacks that were the government's biggest military operation since 2002.
Those strikes were ordered hours after an ethnic Tamil suicide bomber targeted the top government military commander in Colombo, wounding the officer and killing nine other people. They also came in response to Tamil rebel attacks on navy ships, the military said.
Military spokesman Brigadier Prasad Samarasinghe said the only highway linking the south with the north -- blocked by the government on Wednesday due to security concerns -- reopened yesterday.
Blockade
The government blockade of the A9 highway stopped deliveries of petroleum products to the north leading to shortages in the Jaffna Peninsula, the traditional home of Sri Lanka's 3.2 million Tamils.
The rebels, formally known as the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE), said 40,000 people, almost all Tamils, have fled their homes in the northeast and that the rebel movement would seek to provide them shelter. Twelve people were killed by the strikes, the group said.
There was no way of verifying the claims.
"This terror atmosphere that has been created throughout the Tamil homeland has shattered the Tamil people," the rebels said in a statement. "LTTE had protected Tamil people ... for many years. Today, Tamil people are seeking and expecting protection from our movement."
Despite violations on both sides, the European monitoring team said that the accord still stands.
"Certainly, we still have a valid ceasefire. No one has abrogated it," Henricsson said on Wednesday. However, he said that "what is going on is a serious violation of the agreement."
RSS