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LTTE rival shot amid increasing chaos
 Sri Lankan troops on Thursday found the bodies of two suspected Tamil Tiger rebels believed killed in a shootout the night before, the military said, as soaring violence threatened the return of a full-scale civil war. The latest fighting broke out on Wednesday night when rebels attacked a patrol near Trincomalee, northeast of the capital, Colombo, the militarys Web site said. Troops recovered two suspected rebels bodies, two assault rifles and a grenade launcher, the military said. The statement could not be independently verified. There was no immediate comment from the rebels. Four other people, two policemen, a soldier and a politician, died on Wednesday in separate attacks by suspected Tamil Tigers in northern Sri Lankas Jaffna peninsula. The politician killed was R Skandarajah Dhavan, a leader of minority Tamil party PLOTE - which fought the state alongside the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) before turning to the political mainstream in the late 1980s. He had been kidnapped late on Wednesday. Dhavans body was found beside a reservoir. It was surely the LTTE, said a military spokesman. Rising violence in the country since last December has killed more than 700 people, half of them civilians, pushing a 2002 Norway-brokered cease-fire to the verge of collapse. Posted by: Fred 2006-07-14 |
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