An unidentified attacker threw a grenade into a camp housing hundreds of war-displaced in Sri LankaÂ’s restive east overnight, wounding eight people, police said on Friday. The explosion in the camp, set up in a Muslim school in the town of Kattankudi in the eastern district of Batticaloa, comes as a new chapter in a two-decade civil war between the state and Tamil Tiger rebels unfolds. It also closely followed visits to the island by top US State Department official Richard Boucher and Anglican spiritual leader Rowan Williams, the Archbishop of Canterbury.
“Someone threw a grenade over the wall into the camp, and eight people were wounded and taken to hospital,” a police officer told Reuters from Kattankudi. Two children were among the wounded. The military says it has nearly driven Tiger fighters from Batticaloa, where an armed renegade faction called the Karuna group - which analysts say is allied to the government - operates freely.
The Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE), who want to carve out an independent state for minority Tamils in the island’s north and east, blamed the government. “This is another example of abuses by the government of Sri Lanka security forces and their paramilitaries,” said Tiger military spokesman Rasiah Ilanthiraiyan. “We had nothing to do with it.”