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Sri Lanka's Tamil war spills to Sea |
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May 30, 2000
The navy intercepted and fired at seven speeding boats of the Sea Tigers, the naval unit of the Tamil Tiger guerrillas, destroying two vessels and damaging the rest, government spokeswoman Kusum Rodrigo said in a statement.
Four navy sailors were wounded and the separatists suffered an unspecified number of casualties, Rodrigo said.
Shortly after the rebels escalated the fighting to seize the Jaffna peninsula, naval boats intercepted and fired at a Sea Tigers flotilla. But the attack did not cause any damage to the rebel vessels.
The latest sea battle came as U.S. Under Secretary of State Thomas Pickering began talks in Colombo with Sri Lankan Foreign Minister Lakshman Kadirgamar on security issues.
The United States has said it does not support the rebel's demand for a homeland in the north and the east. Instead, Washington has said it would like the conflict to be resolved keeping Sri Lanka's territorial integrity intact. That view is also supported by India, Sri Lanka's largest neighbor.
Both Pickering and Kadirgamar declined to talk to reporters. Pickering is scheduled to meet with President Chandrika Kumaratunga later in the day.
In the north, the United Nations said its workers have come across hundreds of families carrying their wounded out of the war zone, where they say civilians are being killed.
"In interviews with UNHCR staff members, these persons indicated they were fleeing hostilities. There were injured among them," the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees said in the statement. "They stated that there were civilians who were killed and injured during military actions over the past two weeks."
The Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam, or LTTE, are fighting troops in the north to carve out a homeland for the 3.2 million minority Tamils. The rebels allege that the majority Sinhalese discriminate against the Tamils.
Because of the recent reports, the UNHCR appealed "again to the government and the LTTE to ensure security for civilians and their freedom to move to safety."
In response, Defense Ministry spokesman Brig. Palitha Fernando said, "You cannot blame us all the time for deaths of civilians. The terrorists all the time are using artillery and some of them are falling on civilian areas."
He said the government is doing all it can to ensure the safety of 500,000 civilians trapped in the Jaffna peninsula, but did not elaborate.
The rebels did not comment. They had offered a unilateral 12-hour cease-fire Saturday to allow civilians to leave the battle zone.
TamilNet.com, a web site that gives the Tamil Tigers perspective, accused the military of not respecting the cease-fire.
The government, on the other hand, said the rebels did not honor their own cease-fire and shelled the military Saturday.
The claims cannot be verified because neither side allows journalists to visit the war zone. Local and foreign media reports on the war are censored and telephone links to Jaffna have been cut.
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