Sri Lanka conducts air strikes against LTTE rebels
Dated 27/7/2006
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The Sri Lankan air force bombed Tamil Tiger rebel territory in the island's northeast for a second day on Thursday amid a spat over water supplies, officials said, but there were no immediate details on casualties.
The government accuses the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) of blocking water supplies to farmland in Trincomalee, where the government and rebels both control territory.
The Tigers say local Tamil civilians stopped water flowing from a reservoir, demanding that the government build water towers in Tamil areas.
Officials said the Air Force had launched air strikes in an effort to help irrigation engineers reach the area, and to target a suspected clandestine airstrip in the northern district of Mullaithivu, where the Tigers' naval wing is based.
"The Tigers have prevented the flow of water to irrigate 30,000 acres of farmland on which 15,000 families depend," Defence spokesman Keheliya Rambukwella told Reuters. "It is against human rights, against the (Geneva) Convention, and it is against humanity."
"Therefore the defence authorities had to take a decision on humanitarian grounds to attack precise targets," he added. "We are taking some deterrent measures -- whatever will consolidate access to the water tank."
The Tigers had no immediate details on any casualties. They said a 10-year-old boy was killed during air raids on Wednesday.
The aerial bombardment comes as United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees Antonio Guterres is visiting the island to assess the plight of hundreds of thousands of Sri Lankans displaced by a two-decade civil war.
WAR FEARS
The bombing raid is the latest in a series of attacks and clashes between the military and the LTTE that many fear could rupture a 2002 ceasefire and reignite a war that has killed more than 65,000 people since 1983.
More than 800 people have been killed so far this year alone.
Sporadic attacks continued on Thursday. A civilian was shot dead in the northern Jaffna peninsula, while a soldier and two other civilians were injured when a Claymore fragmentation mine exploded near a Hindu college in the district.
Wednesday's airstrikes in Trincomalee came just hours after UNHCR's Guterres visited the district.
"This is a very complex situation. The risk is that an incident is followed by another and there is an escalation," Guterres told a news conference in Colombo on Thursday. "Restraint is essential to avoid any kind of escalation."
The UNHCR estimates there are 315,000 long-term internally displaced people in Sri Lanka due to the protracted conflict, 67,000 of whom live in camps and around 247,000 of whom live with relatives and friends. There are another 125,000 Sri Lankan refugees abroad, 68,000 of them in neighbouring India.
