COLOMBO, 17 October 2006 — Tamil Tiger rebels rammed a truck loaded with explosives into a naval convoy in central Sri Lanka yesterday, killing at least 103 sailors and wounding more than 150, in what the military described as a cold-blooded massacre.
“All these people were without weapons and were going on leave,” military spokesman Brig. Prasad Samarasinghe said.
Samarasinghe said the attack happened near the town of Dambulla, about 150 km northeast of the capital Colombo, when the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) rammed a small truck loaded with explosives into a convoy of military buses.
The wounded were evacuated to nearby hospitals.
He said the buses were carrying sailors from the port town of Trincomalee.
President Mahinda Rajapakse’s office said in a statement that the attack “was further proof of the LTTE’s unmitigated commitment to violence to achieve its ends and was in total disregard of international demands for it to abandon violence and seek peaceful means to achieve its goals.”
The attack was one of the deadliest since a Norwegian-brokered 2002 cease-fire.
“This inhuman act is a clear revenge by the terrorists on the navy who inflicted successive defeats for LTTE against their attempts of smuggling arms and explosives,” a military statement said.
On Sunday, the navy destroyed a trawler loaded with arms along the west coast, killing at least five Tamil Tiger separatists.
A witness said that several of the buses attacked yesterday had caught fire, while the truck driven by the suicide bomber was destroyed. He said the body of the truck driver was found about 50 meters from the scene.
The attack comes as a Japanese envoy held talks with the Sri Lankan president amid intensified diplomatic efforts to strengthen the peace process between the government and rebels ahead of scheduled talks between the two sides later this month in Switzerland.
It was not immediately clear what impact the attack would have on those talks. There was no immediate comment from the rebels on the attack, although they routinely deny their involvement.
Yasushi Akashi also planned to travel to the rebel stronghold in the north to talk with the Tiger leadership during his five days in Sri Lanka.
A Japanese Embassy spokesman said he had no information yet on whether those plans would change following the attack.
Meanwhile, an air force warplane crashed in a fresh blow to government forces. Military sources said the Israeli-built Kfir jet crashed during a mission against Tamil Tiger rebels, but the Defense Ministry said the pilot was on a training exercise.
The plane crashed into the Negombo lagoon, near the island’s only international airport.
