By SPA
Colombo : Tamil Tiger rebels said Sri Lankan government fighter jets killed five civilians in an air raid on their northern stronghold on Friday, Reuters reported.
Fighting between the military and the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam has intensified since the government formally pulled out of a six-year-old ceasefire pact in January, though a renewed war has been raging since 2006.
The Air Force said it had bombed and destroyed an isolated rebel boat yard in the village of Kiranchi, west of the Tigers’ de facto capital of Kilinochchi, on Friday morning. It declined to comment on the Tiger assertion.
“Five civilians were killed and seven more were injured, two of them critically, when Sri Lanka bombed a coastal civilian settlement in the Kiranchi area,” the Tigers’ Peace Secretariat said in an email.