By Xinhua
Colombo : A high security alert for possible Tamil Tiger rebel strikes in an immediate suburb of the Sri Lankan capital has led to the arrest of 14 people on suspicion, the police said Friday.
A joint army and police search was launched between 4 p.m. and 6 p.m. Thursday at Nugegoda, a popular residential suburb east of here. “Over 2,300 people, 40 vehicles and over 200 trade establishments were searched,” a police spokesman said.
Some 14 people including two Tamils and 12 Sinhalese were arrested, the police said.
The search was conducted on information that the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) may carry out a bomb explosion in and around Nugegoda area.
Frequent and random searches of vehicles and people are common in the city in order to prevent infiltration of LTTE members from the north and east of the country.
The government claims that LTTE rebels are desperate for an attack in the capital after the troops had evicted them from Eastern Province.
The entire Eastern Province was brought under army control in mid-July with the fall of Thoppigala, a main jungle training base for the LTTE in the eastern Batticaloa district.
However, the rebels claimed that they had withdrawn from Eastern Province for tactical reasons.
The LTTE has been fighting the government since the mid-1980s to establish a separate homeland for the minority Tamils in the north and east claiming discrimination at the hands of the Sinhala majority.
Nearly 70,000 people have been killed in the island’s separatist armed conflict during the last two decades.