Posted on 08/07/2006 4:16:54 AM PDT by Republicain
Fifteen local employees of a French charity have been found shot dead in the strife-torn town of Muttur in northern Sri Lanka, aid workers say. An official from the group, Action Against Hunger, said the bodies had been found in the agency's office.
Fighting between the army and Tamil Tigers erupted in the Muttur area after the rebels cut the water supply to villages more than two weeks ago.
The army on Sunday launched fresh shelling of rebel positions.
The attacks came despite a Tamil Tiger agreement to allow the reservoir to be reopened and a threat that renewed shelling would be seen by the rebels as a declaration of war.
Post-tsunami work
The Consortium of Humanitarian Agencies, which found the bodies of the aid workers, said it was unclear who had committed the killings.
The director-general of Action Against Hunger, Benoit Miribel, said the organisation had not suffered such a loss in its 25 years of existence.
He said the group had wanted to send a team to the area but was prevented by soldiers.
"Our sympathy is with the families of the victims and with all the civilians affected by this massacre, whose scale is not known," Mr Miribel said.
The ethnic-Tamil aid workers had been working on post-Asian tsunami relief and reconstruction.
A pro-Tamil Tiger website blamed the government for the killings but the military rejected the claim.
The Tigers had offered to open a sluice gate to let water through to farmers in government-controlled lands.
The head of rebels movement's political wing, SP Thamilselvan, said the government's decision to resume shelling was "a declaration of war".
"We may have to take a defensive position if the shelling continues. It is not decided yet," he said.
But the Sri Lankan army said the Tamil Tigers had started the fighting.
"When the terrorists opened with their artillery, we had no choice but to retaliate," army spokesman Brig Abdullah Jayawardene told the BBC.
The head of the Scandinavian monitoring mission, Maj Gen Ulf Henricsson, had been heading to the sluice gate to see its reopening.
He said: "It did not seem so healthy to be there so we left... It seems some people want war rather than water."
The Muttur fighting has been some of the island's fiercest since the signing of a ceasefire agreement four years ago.
The government says it is committed to the truce but the political situation with the rebels, who want a separate homeland in the north and east, remains deadlocked.
About 60,000 people have died since the rebel insurgency started three decades ago.
From Wikipedia:
"The Sri Lankan government (ranked 25th in the failed state index and relies on child sex tourism to generate some of its foreign currency".
big kettle of fish cookoff in progress it seems.....
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