COLOMBO, 26 July 2004 — Sri Lanka’s Tamil Tiger rebels yesterday killed eight rivals in the worst outbreak of violence in three months as Norway prepared to launch a fresh bid to save the island’s peace process.
The Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) told local Tamil-language reporters that they killed the eight men at a “safe house” of the breakaway faction of renegade regional commander V. Muralitharan, better known as Karuna.
The Tiger officials said a government soldier, believed to be a military intelligence officer, was among the eight men killed at Kottawa, a suburb of the capital, but the army denied one of their men had been involved.
The LTTE in a statement posted on its peace secretariat website said the men who killed top aides of Karuna “surrendered” to them yesterday in the eastern district of Ampara, 350 kilometers east of here.
“They reported that they were with the Karuna faction till Saturday and had strong difference of opinion all the while and at 01.00 hours today, shot dead seven of Karuna’s men,” the statement said.
“Those killed are Kuganesan, Castro, Kesavan, Ruban, Arparan, Vicky and Vimalkanth,” the statement said without referring to the eighth victim identified by police as a member of the majority Sinhalese community. The Tigers said that the men had been provided with “military protection”.
The Defense Ministry in a statement denied any military involvement.
“There doesn’t appear to have been any struggle and the victims seemed to have been killed in their sleep,” a police official said. “This could have been an inside job or the work of an infiltrator.” Karuna led an unprecedented split in the Tigers in March and went underground five weeks later, after disbanding the combatants under him.
