The Sri Lankan Navy said Friday that at least two Tamil Tiger
boats were destroyed in an early morning confrontation in the
eastern seas.
The Naval spokesman Commander D. K. P. Dassanayake said that two
Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) boats attempted to attack a
Dvora fast attack craft of the Navy by suddenly emerging from the
fishing boats in the seas at Kuchchaveli near the eastern port of
Trincomalee at 5:30 AM local time Friday (24:00 GMT).
Dassanayake denied initial claims of a Naval Dvora getting
destroyed in the attack.
Early Friday attack was preceded by Thursday's confrontation in
the northern Jaffna peninsula's Nagarkovil area.
Two Navy Dvora's were lost in the attack with several Naval
personnel going missing.
The Navy said the LTTE had attempted to attack a civilian ferry
transporting some 300 civilians from the eastern port of
Trincomalee to the north.
The Navy fire had foiled the attempt, officials said. However,
the rebels claimed that they had killed 25 sailors while losing
five of their own men in the clash.
The clashes came after the breakdown of direct talks between the
government and the LTTE in Geneva late last month.
The talks collapsed over the dispute involving the opening of
the main A9 highway between the northern Jaffna peninsula and the
south of the country.
Also on Friday, a minority Tamil legislator and his bodyguard
were shot dead by unidentified gunmen in the Sri Lankan capital of
Colombo, police and military sources said.
Nadarajah Raviraj, a member of parliament belonging to the Tamil
National Alliance (TNA) was driving near his residence in Colombo
when unidentified gunmen opened fire at his car around 8:30 AM
local time (03:00 GMT).
Raviraj was sent to the National Hospital in Colombo with
serious head injuries, hospital sources said, adding that both
Raviraj and his bodyguard succumbed to their injuries at the
hospital.
Raviraj was a lawyer and the mayor of Jaffna, the main Tamil
city in the north of the country before entering parliament through
the TNA which is seen as a proxy party of the Liberation Tigers of
Tamil Eelam rebels.
The parliamentarian took part in a demonstration Thursday
against the Sri Lanka Army shelling in the east district of Vaharai
where scores of Tamil civilians were killed.
The pro-rebel website Tamil Net described the twice elected
legislator as "an outspoken parliamentarian who voiced against the
extra-judicial killings and forced disappearances in northeast and
Colombo."
The police had commenced a search operation in the capital to
apprehend the suspects.
The continued clashes have endangered the Norwegian backed
process to bring peace to the island ending over two decades old
ethnic armed separatist conflict.
The LTTE has been fighting an independent homeland in the north
and east between the mid-1980s and 2002 when the Norwegians
brokered a ceasefire.
(Xinhua News Agency November 10, 2006)
