COLOMBO, 18 November 2005 — Rebels burning tires and sporadic explosions blocked thousands of Sri Lanka’s minority Tamils from voting yesterday in a tight election for a new president to shape stalled peace efforts in this country bloodied by civil war and devastated by last year’s tsunami.

Voting was smooth in western and southern parts of the country, and Election Commissioner Vanyananda Dissanayake said the vote was “largely peaceful and incident free” compared to past votes. Turnout was 75 percent.

But in the north and east — territory of the feared Tamil Tiger rebels — grenade attacks, roadblocks and simple intimidation kept minority Tamils away from the polls, which pro-rebel groups had urged them to boycott.

In Jaffna, the main city in northern Sri Lanka’s Tamil heartland, turnout was an abysmal .014 percent, the lowest ever anywhere in the country.

The Tamils, who make up just under 20 percent of Sri Lanka’s 19 million people, were potential kingmakers in the tightly contested election.

The race pitted hard-line Prime Minister Mahinda Rajapakse against dovish opposition leader Ranil Wickremesinghe, whose softer line on peace talks with the rebels won him wide support among Tamils.

For many in Sri Lanka, solving any of the country’s problems — aiding tsunami victims, developing the economy — start with ending the war.

The new president “will have to sort out the country’s main ethnic problem,” said D. Maulana, 35, who sells auto parts in Colombo. “As all of us know without that nothing can go forward until it is over.”

Regardless, many Tamils appeared to heed the boycott call, while others stayed home in the face of intimidation by rebels and their supporters.

In Jaffna, controlled by the government but which has a heavy presence of Tigers, rebel supporters hit a Tamil man in the head to keep him from voting. A bus driver who tried to run through a roadblock at a nearby rebel enclave did not make it and was also beaten.

A series of grenade blasts forced European Union observers to pull out of the eastern city of Batticaloa, the scene of frequent clashes between the Tigers and breakaway rebel factions.

At least two people were killed in the attacks by unidentified assailants.

The Tigers made no overt statements on whether Tamils should vote, but pro-rebel student groups that often speak for the insurgents had urged Tamils to boycott, saying neither candidate would help them win a homeland in northeastern Sri Lanka.

In Tiger strongholds, there was no polling because of security concerns. So the government set up special voting booths on the edge of insurgent territory to accommodate the more than 200,000 voters who live behind rebel lines.

But officials reported that roadblocks and intimidation had kept most from making it out of rebel territory to vote.

In the Batticaloa district, split between the rebels and government, turnout was 43 percent, down from around 70 percent in the last presidential vote — a drop officials attributed to the fact that few Tamils from rebel areas voted.

Perinban, a 57-year-old Tamil farmer from a rebel area near the eastern village of Vavunathivu, wanted to vote. But on his way to the polling station he saw a roadblock and knew exactly what it meant: “Burning tires are a signal that we should not go beyond this.”