SRI LANKA: Suspected Tamil Tiger rebels ambushed and killed 13 Sri Lankan sailors in an attack on a naval convoy in northern Sri Lanka yesterday in the worst breach of a 2002 ceasefire so far.
Military spokesmen said the rebels used a combination of claymore fragmentation mines, rocket-propelled grenades (RPG) and assault rifles to hit the naval bus and truck in the northern district of Mannar.
"They laid a deliberate ambush. It was very well carried out," an army spokesman said. "They fixed four claymores. All of them were blasted.
"They fired five RPG rounds and then small arms. When we got to the scene we found 12 dead bodies and three wounded, but one of them died."
The attack took place near the Mannar Sea between Sri Lanka and southern India, the scene of a naval clash on Thursday that the Tigers say killed three sailors in the most serious incident at sea since the truce.
Clashes between the military and rebels have been rising since the Tigers threatened a return to war during 2006 if they did not get concessions from the government. Two claymore-mine attacks earlier in the month killed 14 soldiers.
At least 64,000 people have been killed in Sri Lanka's two-decades-old civil war, which has left much of the north and east in ruins and restricted the whole island's economic growth.
Nordic truce monitors said they did not yet have details of the latest incident, but it was an extremely worrying development at a time when the two sides are unable to agree on a venue for peace talks, let alone discuss rebel demands for a Tamil homeland.
"The question is how much the security forces can take and the ceasefire can hold," Sri Lanka monitoring mission chief Hagrup Haukland told reporters.
"There are powers and elements that do not want peace within this country."
He said his unarmed monitors had ceased patrolling on the army-held northern Jaffna peninsula because of the deteriorating security situation, which has seen them attacked by mobs and get uncomfortably close to grenade and other attacks.
In a letter to the monitors, the rebels said they would continue to carry arms at sea, which both the navy and the monitoring mission say breaches the ceasefire terms.
The navy says it will try to apprehend any rebels carrying weapons at sea.
Officials said rebels had also thrown a grenade at a sentry point outside Jaffna. Hospital sources said the troops had fired back, killing two civilians.
In November the rebels threatened to resume their armed struggle in the new year unless the government agreed to grant them wide political powers in the north and east, where they run a de-facto state covering a seventh of the island.
Norway, Japan, the EU and the US - co-chairs of a Sri Lankan donors conference - called on the Tigers this week to end what they called a campaign of violence immediately, or face unspecified serious consequences. - (Reuters)