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| Sri Lanka |
| Bomb kills civilian, wounds 5 soldiers in Sri Lanka |
| 2007-02-18 |
| A roadside bomb killed a civilian and wounded five soldiers in northern Sri Lanka on Saturday, while the army found assault rifles in an eastern village captured from Tamil Tiger rebels last month, the military said. The rebels were suspected in the bomb targeting a bus transporting soldiers in the northern, Tamil-majority city of Jaffna, the government’s national security media center said. The blast also wounded a civilian bystander, the center’s Web site said. Meanwhile, military spokesman Brig. Prasad Samarasinghe said troops found 28 T-56 assault rifles on Saturday in eastern Batticaloa district’s Vaharai village. The arms find comes a day after the army recovered 50 assault rifles buried in another former rebel-held village in neighboring Trincomalee district. Two mortar launchers were also found in the area. Samarasinghe said Tamil Tiger rebels may have hidden the weapons as they fled from the areas. “They had no way to take them (the weapons). They had to carry a lot of casualties,” he said. Last month, the army wrested control from the rebels of a main road connecting two of the main northeastern towns of Batticaloa and Trincomalee, for the first time in 11 years. Samarasinghe said that there could be more hidden weapons, and that troops were trying to ensure that the rebels do not return for them. Vaharai _ on an impoverished rebel-held strip of coastline in Batticaloa district _ had been the scene of heavy fighting for months, with over 500 combatants killed since October, according to the military. The government says the rebels used Vaharai as a transit point to smuggle drugs and arms into the country, and as a base for naval attacks. The army’s capture of Vaharai sent thousands of terrified villagers fleeing toward the neighboring government-held village of Mankerni, from where they were transported to several refugee camps far from the battle zone. |
| Posted by:Fred |