15 Tamil aid workers executed
The Tigers accuse the government, which is keeping silent. Meanwhile, shelling continued yesterday.
Mutur (AsiaNews/Agencies) The French aid agency, Action contre la faim (ACF) is trying to discover who killed 15 of its employees, whose bodies were discovered yesterday in Mutur in north-eastern Sri Lanka. However, the army at war with Tamil Tiger rebels in the region refuses to allow the NGO's investigators to enter the city.
The Consortium of Humanitarian Agencies (CHA) found the bodies yesterday. The CHA, which gathers aid agencies at work in the country under one umbrella, said one of its rescue teams had reached the city of Mutur after days of fighting and found the bodies in an ACF office. "The bodies were found face-down, they had been executed," said the CHA head. The victims were Tamil: 11 men and four women.
The previous day, on 5 August, the Liberation Tigers of Tami Eelam (LTTE) accused government forces of killing 15 Tamil civilians working for aid agencies. But until yesterday, clashes between the army and the rebels prevented access to Mutur area to verify whether the massacre had taken place. So far, no statement has been forthcoming from Colombo.
The clashes in Mutur started on 26 July when the government charged the LTTE with blocking the Mavilaru canal, depriving around 15,000 families of water. The Tamil Tigers accused the government of using the canal as a pretext to wage all out war against them. According to official figures, more than 426 people have been killed in the clashes, the most violent since the 2002 ceasefire. Many of the victims are civilians.
Yesterday, Sri Lanka's security forces responded to a rebel proposal to withdraw from the canal with more bombardments in the north-east. According to a LTTE spokesman, this amounts to a "declaration of war".
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31/07/2006
