- Title: SRI LANKA: Sri Lanka schools close after blast in capital.
- Date: 16th August 2006
- Summary: SLATE INFORMATION
- Embargoed: 31st August 2006 13:00
- Keywords:
- Location: Sri Lanka
- Country: Sri Lanka
- Topics: Crime / Law Enforcement
- Reuters ID: LVA3JDK3HO0CA9QHGEDCXR0V5M84
- Story Text: Schools were closed across Sri Lanka on Tuesday (August 15) on government orders for holidays to begin early after a suspected Tiger front group threatened to attack civilian targets.
The threat from a group called the High Security Zone Residents Liberation Force, which has claimed responsibility for attacks in the north, came after an ambush on a Pakistan embassy convoy in the capital Colombo killed seven people and wounded 17 on Monday (August 14).
In Colombo, residents feared of more attacks after two blasts in a week and the chilling threat from the suspected Tiger front organisation to start bombing civilians in the majority Sinhalese south.
Seventeen-year old Radika Vigneshwaran arrived at her secondary school in Colombo only to be told it would be closed until August 28th.
"I am doing my advance levels. When I came to school the teacher told me that the school is closed. This is going to affect my preparations for the exam," she said.
A television station on Monday (August 14) broadcast images of what they claim are victims of recent government air raid that killed students studying first-aid but which the government says was a rebel training camp.
Images aired on Tamil Television Network (TTN), which says it has a cameraman on the frontline with Tamil Tiger rebels (the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam or LTTE) also showed scenes of sustained artillery pressure from Tamil Tiger positions and civilians fleeing the violence.
TTN claims 2000 families in the Jaffna Peninsula have been displaced by the recent fighting.
Over the past few days, the region has seen some of the heaviest fighting since a 2002 truce, and TTN reports the Tamil Tigers have broken through some of the military defences in Jaffna.
Tiger rebels said on Monday the air force killed 61 schoolgirls who were attending a first-aid course. The government says it bombed a Tiger training and transit camp.
Sri Lanka conceded that many of the victims were teenagers, and said on Tuesday the age of its enemy was of no concern.
Nordic truce monitors only saw the bodies of 19 young men and women, and while it did not appear to be a rebel camp, they had not ruled out the possibility they were receiving civilian defence training.
The UN Children's Agency UNICEF said they did not have access to the dead. UNICEF says the Tigers and a breakaway faction, which the mainstream rebels accuse the military of helping mount attacks, are both recruiting underage children as soldiers, and the government has lobbied for international pressure to force the Tigers to stop.
At a news conference in the capital Colombo on Tuesday (August 15), the Sri Lankan government and military claimed the Tamil Tigers have been badly hit by the recent offensive and are calling in reinforcements.
Military spokesman Brigadier Athula Jayawardene said that the target, which they are sure was a LTTE training base, was engaged early morning around 0640.
He added that the army had repulsed a major attack on the forward defence lines separating the army from the rebels in the northern Jaffna peninsula.
"The present situation in Jaffna area - the major assault last was yesterday morning and we repulsed that attack. We have so far recovered about 79 dead bodies of terrorists and some of the equipment including heavy weapons. We can see about another hundred bodies lying forward of our forward defended localities. Now in desperation the terrorists are calling their cadres from Mannar, Vanni and areas north of Wali-oya," Jayawardene added.
During the news conference the military showed journalists what appeared to be satellite footage of what they said were Tamil Tiger fighters fleeing a training camp shortly after Kfir jets bombed it on Monday.
Meanwhile the government reiterated that Monday's attack in the capital Colombo was aimed at the Pakistani ambassador to Sri Lanka.
Defence spokesman and cabinet minister Keheliya Rambukwella said the reason was because of the close military cooperation between the two countries.
"It is widely spoken about defence cooperation Pakistan had with so as with India so as with many other neighbours-the defence cooperation that we had with Pakistan particularly during the recent pass. It was known that Pakistan was working with our defence authorities to strengthen the defence institutions" Rambukwella said.
Pakistan has been a key defence supplier to Sri Lanka for most of the two decade old separatist war and provides training for Sri Lankan military personnel in Pakistan.
Aid workers estimate around 100,000 people have been displaced in Sri Lanka's north and east as a result of the fighting.
They're taking refuge in churches and empty homes and stockpiling food amid an indefinite curfew imposed by the army to try and smoke out the rebels.
The Tigers have long demanded a separate homeland for ethnic Tamils in the north and east of Sri Lanka but President Mahinda Rajapakse has ruled this out.
The rebels say government attacks have made peace talks impossible.
Many of Sri Lanka's most prominent Tamils come from the Jaffna peninsula and analysts say the Tigers are bent on eventually capturing a town that they have controlled in previous phases of a war which has killed more than 65,000 people since 1983.
The Tamil Tigers have been fighting for an ethnic Tamil homeland for the past two decades.
They control much of the North Eastern province - but they don't control Jaffna on the northern tip of Sri Lanka, which has about 40,000 Sri Lankan troops stationed on it and which is cut off from the rest of the island. - Copyright Holder: REUTERS
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