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Dozens killed in Sri Lanka blast

Posted on: Monday, 14 August 2006, 08:48 CDT

By Simon Gardner

COLOMBO (Reuters) - Sri Lanka's Tamil Tigers killed seven people in an attack on a Pakistan embassy convoy on Monday, the military said, hours after a suspected rebel front threatened to bomb civilians in the capital and an air raid killed dozens.

The blast, less than a mile from Sri Lankan President Mahinda Rajapakse's residence, came hours after the Air Force bombed the grounds of a former orphanage in the northeast, which the rebels said killed 61 schoolgirls aged 15-18 and injured 155.

It also came as the rebels and military fought artillery battles in the far north in the worst fighting since a 2002 truce, which analysts say has given way to renewed civil war.

The blast in the capital, Colombo, was the second in a week.

"Definitely it's an LTTE attack to the Pakistan ambassador's car but they missed and the backup vehicle got caught," a military spokesman said.

Four military personnel and three civilians were killed in the blast, which bomb squad officials said was caused by a fragmentation mine inside a three wheeler taxi. Seventeen others were injured.

The blast shook buildings and the country's financial markets with the Colombo stock market index falling 2.4 percent as the violence pummeled investor confidence.

Why the Pakistan convoy may have been targeted remains unclear, although the High Commissioner told Reuters it could be because Islamabad backed Sri Lanka diplomatically.

One diplomat said there was a specific threat against him, and believed the attack was intended as a warning.

"It is perhaps because we support the (Sri Lankan) government," Bashir Wali told Reuters. "We are against terrorism everywhere. It is all in that context, I think."

A defense analyst offered other theories.

"Pakistan has been providing military hardware to Sri Lanka for some time," he said, adding: "I wouldn't rule out mistaken identity (either). It could be an opportunistic attack when they saw the military people in the car."

The High Security Zone Residents Liberation Force (HSZRLF), a presumed Tiger front group that says it wants the military out of civilian areas, said earlier if the military targeted minority Tamils then bombs would explode in the majority Sinhalese south.

Diplomats and analysts say the group is an obvious Tiger front.

TARGETED SCHOOLCHILDREN

The rebels said earlier the Air Force had deliberately targeted schoolchildren as they were taking a first aid course in the worst single loss of civilian life since fighting flared three weeks ago.

The military dismissed the claim, saying jets had bombed a rebel training camp and killed 50-60 Tiger fighters. The military posted a photograph on its Web site which it said depicted Tamil schoolgirls in taking weapons training.

Nordic truce monitors said they had seen the bodies of 19 youths, both male and female, aged 17-20 and said the site did not appear to be a rebel training camp. They said the orphanage building itself was still standing, and any orphans had been moved elsewhere some time ago.

Aid workers estimate around 100,000 people have been displaced during three weeks of fighting. Dozens are confirmed dead, and many fear the eventual death toll will be far higher.

On Monday the government accused the rebels of shelling civilian areas in the northern Jaffna peninsula, saying it feared fatalities.

"They have mingled with civilians and are calling artillery fire onto the areas of the security forces," said Major Upali Rajapakse of the National Security Center. "It is falling in and around civilian areas. There has to be civilian dead."

He said the country's east was quiet but artillery rained down on Kayts island, just to the west of Jaffna town, and was being fired across a no-man's land that separates government from rebel territory around 20 miles to the east.

Jaffna residents flocked to shops to stockpile food after the army briefly lifted a curfew. With no prospect of fresh supplies from the country's south, prices of basic goods were soaring.

"We are used to being displaced, but this time it came about so suddenly we were ill-prepared," said 50-year-old fisherman Ledil Amaldas, who fled his coastal village and is staying with a relative in Jaffna.

Many of Sri Lanka's most prominent Tamils come from Jaffna 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.

(Additional reporting by Peter Apps and Ranga Sirilal in COLOMBO and Simon Cameron-Moore in ISLAMABAD)

Source: REUTERS

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