COLOMBO, Sri Lanka: Tamil rebels Friday attacked two army posts and a village in northern and eastern Sri Lanka, killing one man and wounding four others as thousands of Buddhists thronged temples on the holiest day of their religion.
Military sources said guerrillas fighting an independent Tamil state fired motar rounds into an army camp on Mandaitivu Island, one half mile off the western coast of the rebel-held Jaffna Peninsula in northern Sri Lanka.
Three soldiers were wounded and flown by plane for treatment in the capital, the sources said.
Tamil rebels also launched mortar rounds into an army camp in Vasavilan and set up a forward outpost of the northern military command base at palely, 250 miles north of Colombo, the sources said, No casualties were reported.
In eastern Trincomalee district, guerrillas firing small arms raided a village whose residents are Sinhalese, the predominantly Buddhist ethnic group that makes up 76 percent of Sri Lankans population Of 16 million, the sources said.
They said at least one civilian was killed and one the attack on Gomarankadawala, about 50 miles north of the port city of Trincomalee.
The sources said the army posts attacked was set during a government offensive against Tamil separatists in Jafigna province that began May 16 and ended with the withdrawal of a 1,000-man armored column that tried to break through heavy rebel resistance to the beleaguered provincial capital of Jaffna.
While the government earlier this week conceded the retreat was a setback, officials, were quoted in newspaper reports today as claiming successes by other units in extending defensive perimeters around military bases in palely and Velvettiturai and the naval facility at Karaninagar.
The government said 60 guerrillas were killed during the offensive, while two soldiers died; Spokesman for Tamil rebel groups living in exile in the southern Indian city of Madras claimed 75 troops were killed by gave no figures for their own casualties.
Tamil rebels have been waging an all-out fight for three years for an independent state in the eastern and northern regions of the Indian oceans land off the southern tip of India; they claim discriminations against the predominantly Hindu minority by the Sinhalese.
Thousands of Sinhalese Buddhists crowded temples across the country to celebrate the festival of Vesak, which marks the birth, enlighten and death of Lord Buddha 2,350 years ago.
Security was tight at shrines around Colombo; with hundreds of additional police placed on duty following the bombings two weeks ago of an Air Lanka passenger jet and the city’s main public telegraph office observance of the holiday.
In a special message to the nation carried in newspapers, Prime Minister R. Premasada called for an end to the bloody ethnic strife.
“This nation and much of the world are undergoing great suffering at this time,” he said. “Let us rededicate ourselves to lead lives of self-contentment, self-sacrifice and self-discipline which would make all beings well and happy.
Article extracted from this publication >> May 30, 1986
