By P.K. Balachandran, IANS
Colombo : The two bomb blasts and two shooting incidents resulting in deaths of at least 28 civilians, marked the official end of the six-year old truce pact between the government and the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) rebels Wednesday.
The blasts and the shooting incidents occurred in the district of Moneragala, in southern Sri Lanka, the heartland of the majority Sinhalese community.
The first blast was a claymore mine attack on a bus carrying factory workers and some school children, at Niyadella between Buttala and Okkampitiya. The blast took place at 7.40 a.m. (local time).
The second was also a claymore mine attack, and the target was a Unicorn armoured personnel carrier going on the Buttala-Kataragama road. Four soldiers were injured.
The third was an attack on farmers engaged in shifting cultivation in the Okkampitiya area. Two of them were hacked and shot dead, and four others were injured, the Sri Lankan defence ministry said.
Equally significant was that the attacks took place near the famous Hindu-Buddhist shrine for Lord Skanda or Muruga, at Kataragama, a time-honoured symbol of Hindu-Buddhist and Tamil-Sinhalese unity in Sri Lanka.
Sri Lankan President Mahinda Rajapaksa blamed the LTTE for the carnage and called upon the people to remain calm and render all possible assistance to the security forces to eliminate terrorism from their midst.
“I unequivocally and severely condemn the explosion carried out by the LTTE at Niyadella in Buttala today (Wednesday) and the subsequent armed attack on the village of Dambeyaya at Okkampitiya, targeting innocent civilians, including women and children, and reject with contempt the renewed message of terror and violence sent through these acts of unmitigated cruelty,” the president said in his message.
Military spokesman Brig. Udaya Nanayakkara told IANS that after the passenger bus was blasted at Niyadella, terrorists opened fire on the passengers. 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,” the military spokesman said.
“In the second case, the casualties were less because the vehicle was armoured,” he added.
The Uva provincial government ordered the closure of all schools under its jurisdiction for the next three days.
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 informed peace facilitator Norway 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.
Seeing a connection between the terror acts and the ending of the CFA, president Rajapaksa said that the LTTE might be attempting, by these “acts of savagery”, to show Sri Lankans and the world, that that it was the decision of the government to abrogate the CFA that was the immediate cause of this carnage.
But the world should not forget that the LTTE had indulged in a similar carnage on July 11, 2006 at Kabettigollewa, in the north central province, in which 67 bus passengers including women and children were killed, the president said.
The US also “strongly” condemned the blasting of the passenger bus and said it bore the hallmark of the LTTE. Such attacks instilled “fear” among the people, its embassy said in a release.
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, which 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.
It was only Tuesday that the Japanese special peace envoy, Yasushi Akashi, ppaealed to both parties to cease hostilities and resume talks on a devolution package.
He issued a veiled warning to the Sri Lankan government, which unilaterally abrogated the truce pact that if the war continued and the humanitarian crisis worsened Japan would have to re-view 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 (namely, the US, EU, Japan, UK and Norway) appealed for peace and resumption of talks. They also threw 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.