Sri Lanka: A fresh round of fighting between security forces and Tamil separatists in Sri Lanka’s volatile north killed 20
rebels and two soldiers as air force jets bombed two suspected rebel bases, the military said on Tuesday.
The combatants were killed in 10 separate battles Monday in the Mannar, Vavuniya and Welioya regions just south of the Tamil Tigers’ de facto state in northern Sri Lanka, said military spokesman Brig Udaya Nanayakkara.
The air force also sent fighter jets to bomb a suspected rebel operations centre on Tuesday morning, and hours later they raided a command and communications base, the military said. There were no immediate reports of casualties or damage in the air raids.
Rebel spokesman Rasiah Ilanthirayan did not answer a telephone call seeking comment, but each side routinely disputes its opponent’s version of events.
A pro-rebel Web site reported that two civilians were killed in the air strike.
Fighting between the two sides has escalated in recent months as senior
government officials vowed to crush the rebels this year and end more than two decades of civil war.
Government troops have opened up four fronts around rebel-held territory, while the air force has targeted the group’s leadership.
With fighting increasing in the north, suspected rebels have launched a wave of attacks against civilian and military targets in government-controlled territory in the southern part of this Indian Ocean island nation.
On Monday, a roadside bomb attack on a civilian bus in the Welioya region, about 240 kilometres northeast of Colombo, killed 14 people and wounded 15 others, marring celebrations of the country’s 60th independence day.
Another roadside bombing in the south-eastern town of Buttala killed one soldier and injured two others, the military said.
The Amnesty International said in a statement on Tuesday the government and Tamil Tiger rebels are “failing to comply with their obligations under international humanitarian law and are killing civilians on an increasingly regular basis.’’
“With no perpetrators brought to justice a climate of impunity is becoming entrenched: Unless these patterns are reversed the future appears bleak,’’ the statement quoted Tim Parritt, deputy programme director for Asia-Pacific, as saying.
The attacks came amid a security clampdown in the capital, Colombo, to discourage violence during the independence celebration.