Home International Two blasts, 23 deaths mark end of Sri Lanka ceasefire

Two blasts, 23 deaths mark end of Sri Lanka ceasefire

By P.K. Balachandran, IANS

Colombo : At least 23 civilians, including three small children, were killed in two bomb blasts in Sri Lanka Wednesday, marking the official end of the six-year truce between the government and the Tamil Tiger rebels.

The blasts occurred in the deep south of Sri Lanka, the heartland of the majority Sinhalese community. Equally significantly, the attacks took place near the famous Hindu-Buddhist shrine for Lord Skanda, or Muruga, at Kataragama.

The defence ministry had no hesitation in blaming the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) for the carnage.

The first was a claymore mine attack on a bus carrying factory workers and some schoolchildren at Weliara, between Buttala and Okkampitiya in the south Sri Lankan district of Moneragala.

The second was also a claymore mine attack, and the target was an armoured personnel carrier going on the Buttala-Kataragama road.

According to military spokesperson Udaya Nanayakkara, terrorists opened fire on the passengers after the bus was blasted at Weliara. Buttala and Moneragala hospital doctors confirmed that the dead and the injured had sustained bullet injuries.

“Three of the victims in the first blast were children under five,” Nanayakkara told IANS.

“In the second case, the casualties were fewer because the vehicle was armoured,” he added.

Media reports said the Uva provincial government had ordered the closure of all schools under its jurisdiction.

The blasts took place as the six-year-old Ceasefire Agreement (CFA) between the Sri Lankan government and the LTTE officially ended. The Sri Lankan government had informed peace facilitator Norway on Jan 3 that it was withdrawing from the agreement unilaterally and that it was giving the mandatory 14 days notice as per the terms and conditions of the pact.

Ironically, during the six years the CFA lasted, Sri Lanka, especially the Tamil-speaking north and east, saw more war than peace.

Eight rounds of talks were held between the two parties, but all proved to be fruitless. An undeclared full-scale war that began in mid 2006 and is still on has claimed more than 4,500 lives and displaced more than 300,000 people.

The war has been on despite appeals from the international community to cease hostilities and begin negotiations.

On Tuesday, Japan’s special peace envoy Yasushi Akashi had appealed to both parties to cease hostilities and resume talks on a devolution package.

He had issued a veiled warning to the Sri Lankan government, which had unilaterally abrogated the truce pact, saying that if the war continued and the humanitarian crisis worsened Japan would have to review its relations with Sri Lanka.

Japan is Sri Lanka’s single largest donor.

Akashi did not visit Kilinochchi to meet the LTTE.

Earlier, the co-chairs of the Tokyo donors’ conference (US, EU, Japan, Britain and Norway) had appealed for peace and resumption of talks. They had also thrown their weight behind Norway, the peace broker.

But the Sri Lankan government, ever suspicious of Norway, has said that it wants to “redefine” Oslo’s role in the light of the changed circumstances.