An Independent and Interactive Tamil Community Web Site

10-06-2006

Family of four killed in northwest Sri Lanka

Associated Press, Fri June 9, 2006 08:38 EDT . COLOMBO, Sri Lanka (AP) _ An entire family of four was found hacked to death in northwestern Sri Lanka on Friday, a crime both the government and Tamil Tiger rebels blamed on each other.
A man, his wife and their two young children were killed around midnight Thursday, in Mannar district 220 kilometers (135 miles) north of Colombo, the Media Center for National Security said.

The center said Tamil Tiger rebels are suspected in the killing because the family was helping government forces. But the rebels' media spokesman, Daya Master, denied the allegation and said the military was responsible for the killing.

Scores of civilians have been massacred under mysterious circumstances since hostilities heightened between the government and Tamil Tigers since April. Both sides blame each other, and many killings remain unresolved.

Meanwhile, Tamil Tiger rebels attacked a Sri Lankan military camp also in Mannar on Friday, wounding at least two soldiers, the military said.

The attacks came a day after a Norwegian peace mediator said Sri Lanka's 2002 truce with the rebels faced its deepest crisis yet.

Efforts to bolster the truce suffered Thursday when the two sides went to Norway for talks but the rebels refused to meet with the government representatives, saying they wanted to meet with Norwegian mediators only.

``The failure of the sides to meet ... shows we are in the deepest crisis in the peace process,'' Norwegian Aid Minister Erik Solheim, who brokered the truce, said in Oslo.

However, the Sri Lankan government confirmed its commitment to the cease-fire after Norway asked both sides to honor the truce and ensure the safety of European peace monitors.

``The government is committed to the cease-fire,'' government spokesman Keheliya Rambukwella told a news conference in Colombo on Friday.

The rebels made no comment.

Sri Lanka's civil war began in 1983, and claimed more than 65,000 lives before the cease-fire. The rebels say the country's 3.2 million ethnic Tamil minority need a separate homeland to prosper away from the alleged domination of 14 million Sinhalese in the island country of 19 million people.