25-01-2008

Sri Lanka probes 16 bodies in shallow graves

by Amal Jayasinghe

COLOMBO (AFP) - Sri Lankan police were investigating the gruesome discovery of 16 bullet-riddled bodies dumped in shallow graves in a government-controlled part of the island.

The bodies were found on Thursday evening by villagers in a district 206 kilometres (130 miles) north of the capital Colombo. The victims had been blindfolded, tied up and shot, officials said.

"We are now investigating to initially establish the identity of the victims," said a senior officer in the area, who declined to be named. "We have also increased security in the area."

The latest discovery is certain to compound concerns over the rights situation in Sri Lanka and an increasingly dirty war between troops and Tamil Tiger rebels in which both sides are accused of killing civilians.

Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch have already expressed fears that more civilians could be killed following the government's decision this month to pull out of a ceasefire with the rebels.

The United Nations human rights body has also been demanding it be allowed to establish a permanent presence in Sri Lanka to monitor human rights, but the government has furiously rejected the demand.

Local police officials said they believed the victims had been killed elsewhere and that the graves were hurriedly dug by the side of a lonely stretch of road.

A local hospital source, who also asked not to be named, said autopsies will be performed by Saturday.

The defence ministry immediately blamed Tamil Tiger rebels, who control a large area further to the north and are fighting for independence from the island's ethnic Sinhalese majority.

In a statement, the ministry said the victims were believed to be civilians who had been searching for their cattle, only to be killed by "suspected LTTE (Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam) terrorists."

But local residents said there had been no reports of such a large group going missing in the area.

On Thursday evening, government media officials asked local radio and television stations not to broadcast the report of the mass graves, and some stations complied, pulling the story from their primetime news bulletins.

The press is severely restricted in Sri Lanka, with reporters systematically barred by the government from travelling to front-line areas and rebel-held territory.

In October, police found the bodies of two people blindfolded and shot in the head, while another body was found dumped in a lake near Colombo.

There has been no claim of responsibility for any of the execution-style killings, and the identities of victims has not been discovered or disclosed.

Earlier last year, several minority ethnic Tamils were found dead in and around the capital and elsewhere.

A separate government probe found 430 civilians had been killed during a five-month period up to February 2007, though it was not broken down into ethnicity. Since then, no official count has been announced.

The defence ministry meanwhile said 36 Tamil Tiger rebels were killed in separate clashes across the island's embattled north since Thursday morning. The military also kept up air raids on Friday, the ministry said.

Since the start of this month, Sri Lanka's defence ministry has said government forces have killed 630 rebels while 26 soldiers have died.

The claims cannot be independently verified.

Source-AFP