COLOMBO: Sri Lanka—More than 1,900 people have died in Sri Lanka this year in violence related to the insurgency by separatists of the ethnic Tamil minority and a rebellion by leftist extremists of the Sinhalese majority a senior police Official said Sunday.

The official, speaking on condition of anonymity said the toll included at least 19 people killed during the weekend on the Indian Ocean Island formerly called Ceylon.

The police official said 1,903 people have been killed this year in violence related either to the Tamil fight for a separate nation or the Sinhalese drive to topple the government.

He said 704 people died in January 1,112 in February and 87 so far this month. ”

Among the latest casualties were five Sri Lankan sailors shot dead Saturday afternoon in an ambush near Trincomalee, 150 miles northeast of Colombo, by guerrillas of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam, the official said.

He said 12 naval personnel were returning to a navy run agricultural project outside of the port city after collecting their weekly rations.

The sailors were walking on either side of a jeep searching for landmines when LITE gunmen opened fire from the dense jungle bordering the road, killing five of them, he said. The rebels fled when Sri Lankan troops from a nearby base rushed to the scene.

The LTTE is the only Tamil rebel group still pursuing a more than five year war for independence from the Buddhist Sinhalese controlled central government for Northeastern Province, home to most of the islands 3 million predominately Hindu Tamils.

Other Tamil rebel groups endorsed a July 1987 accord signed between India, their erstwhile patron, and Sri Lanka aimed at ending the war by granting the province limited self-rule from Colombo. India has deployed more than 60,000 troops to crush the LTTE, which has been badly mauled, but remains a significant threat.

In other violence the police official said two police officers were wounded when their patrol car was ambushed Sunday morning near Kurunegala 60 miles northwest of Colombo, by members of a Sinhalese rebel group, the People’s Liberation Front.

He said armed rebels from the Sinhalese group also vandalized home of a former Member of Parliament from President Ranasinghe Premadasa’s United National Party, removing the doors and windows.

The politician, W.M. Ekanayake, was not in his home in the north central town of Medirigiria at the time of the incident early Sunday.

The People’s Liberation Front, comprised mostly of students and unemployed youths from among the 11 million Sinhalese has been waging a campaign of murder and sabotage aimed at creating chaotic conditions that would allow it to seize power and impose a Marxiststyle regime on the island.

“There is one thing stronger than all the armies in the world; and that is an idea whose time has come.”

Victor Hugo.

Article extracted from this publication >>  March 10, 1989