Suspected Tamil Tiger rebels raided a village in eastern Sri Lanka, abducted 14 Sinhalese laborers and shot all but one of them dead, the area's police chief said yesterday.
It was not immediately clear why the assailants launched the attack late on Monday at a state-run immigration project in Mhasenpura village near Batticaloa. One of the victims managed to escape, said Deputy Inspector General of Police Nihal Karunaratne said.
"A group of about 25 came to the village, spotted the house where these people were staying and took them away," Karunaratne said. "We have information that 13 were shot and killed."
A government spokesman called the attack a plot by the Tamil Tigers, formally known as the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam, or LTTE, to provoke a Sinhalese backlash.
"This is part of a sinister plot of the LTTE to provoke a backlash so that they can justify their demand for separation," government spokesman Keheliya Rambukwella said.
The village, a Sinhalese settlement, is close to rebel-controlled areas and the guerrillas are known to oppose such settlements in areas they say are part of their envisaged Tamil homeland.
"This could be another motive, but this is not the way to oppose such settlements," Rambukwella said.
"They need to talk and not carry out this barbaric killing as a solution," he said of the need to resume stalled peace talks.
The Tigers have been fighting since 1983 for a separate homeland for Sri Lanka's Tamil minority, claiming discrimination at the hands of the majority Sinhalese.
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