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Sri Lankan forces bomb stronghold

Villagers, fearing further attacks by Tamil Tiger rebels, arrive at a school to spend the night there, in Kabithigollewa, about 210km northeast of Colombo, Sri Lanka, on Thursday. Suspected Tiger rebels attacked a crowded bus Thursday in northern Sri Lanka, triggering a pair of hidden explosives that killed at least 64 people in the worst violence since a 2002 ceasefire, officials said. The government quickly launched retaliatory air strikes against rebel-held positions. PHOTO: AP

Sri Lanka's air force pounded Tamil Tiger rebel positions in the country's north for a second day yesterday, a senior insurgent leader said ahead of a mass funeral for 64 people killed a day earlier in a bus bombing blamed on the insurgents.

The Tigers said the airstrikes near a key rebel stronghold showed that the government was on a war footing, while the country's president said he remained committed to the country's 2002 cease-fire accord, despite Thursday's bus attack.

Air force jets dropped bombs in the area around the northern town of Kilinochchi, Tiger leader Seevaratnam Puleedevan told AP, but he did not cite casualty figures.

"They are carrying out attacks. At least eight bombs have been dropped since dawn today," Puleedevan said. "I think the Sri Lankan government, by launching the air raids, is showing that they are ready for war."

"We are assessing the ground situation and our Central Command will take appropriate action," he said of possible rebel reaction to the reported bombing.

Dangerously tense relations between the rebels and the government deteriorated further on Thursday when suspected insurgents triggered hidden explosives aimed at a bus in a predominantly ethnic Sinhalese area, killing 64 people in the worst violence since the truce.

Within hours, the Sri Lankan air force began retaliatory attacks on positions controlled by the rebels, formally known as the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam, or LTTE.

A top defense analyst said the air raids were intended to be a show of strength by the government, and as retaliation.

"Probably the attacks are designed to show the [rebels] that the government won't take things lying down," said Harry Goonetilleke, a retired air marshal of Sri Lankan air force.

"The attacks are also kind of retaliation ... mainly aimed at probably to show the LTTE that they will not get away," he said.

Regardless, Sri Lanka's president insisted he remains committed to peace with the Tamil Tigers, despite the bus attack.

``We will not let this incident, however barbaric it is, sabotage the peace process. We are deeply committed to the peace process,'' President Mahinda Rajapakse was quoted as saying by state-run Daily News yesterday.

With peace talks largely abandoned, the bus attack edged this tropical island nation off India's southern tip further toward all-out war in a conflict that killed 65,000 people before the truce.

The dead in the bus blast in Kabithigollewa included at least 15 children, their blue school uniforms coated with blood and gore. At least 78 people were wounded in the attack.
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