Sri Lanka's military launched new strikes on Tamil Tiger areas in the island's northeast today, a day after a deadly suicide bomb attack blamed on rebels shattered a fragile ceasefire.
Military spokesman Brigadier Prasad Samarasinghe said the strikes came after the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) fired on naval patrol craft off the eastern port of Trincomalee for a second day.
The Tigers said they would retaliate if the government attacks - launched after a suspected suicide bomb in the capital killed nine and wounded the army commander continued.
The pro-rebel Tamilnet website said that at least 12 people, including women and children, died in yesterday's raids but there was no official casualty figure.
The attacks were the first official military action since a 2002 ceasefire halted the two-decades-old civil war and raised fears the Norwegian-brokered truce was on the brink of collapse.
Swedish Major-General Ulf Henricsson, who heads the Sri Lanka Monitoring Mission (SLMM) that oversees the truce, said if air strikes continued, peace talks would become difficult.
"We still have a valid ceasefire agreement. No party has ended it, but of course it is not a ceasefire right now," he said. The government defended the strikes.
"This is a containment action. It is also designed to deter. Over and over again servicemen were killed in callous attacks," said Palitha Kohona, head of the government's peace secretariat.
More than 100 people had already died in the bloodiest two weeks since the truce even before a female suicide bomber, disguised to look pregnant, blew herself up at Colombo's high-security army headquarters.
The Tigers yesterday denied responsibility for the suicide bomb attack, but scant mention was made of it on their website.
They indefinitely postponed peace talks that were to take place last week in Geneva, accusing the government of obstructing the transport of eastern rebel leaders to a pre-talks meeting.