4 killed in attack on TMVP office in Sri Lanka

IANS
First Published : 28 Oct 2008 02:22:19 PM IST
Last Updated : 28 Oct 2008 02:26:16 PM IST

COLOMBO: At least four members of the Tamil Tigers breakaway faction were killed after "unidentified gunmen" attacked them in Sri Lanka's east around midnight Monday, the military said.

Five members of the Tamil Makkal Viduthalai Puligal (TMVP) also went missing following the attack at Black Bridge in Chenkalladi in Batticaloa district.

Military spokesman Brigadier Udaya Nanayakkara said the police were trying to identify and arrest the attackers.

The TMVP is led by Vinayagamoorthy Muralitharan alias Karuna, who broke away from the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) in 2004 and has since sided with the Sri Lankan government.

Karuna was appointed recently as an MP of the ruling coalition of President Mahinda Rajapaksa, after he returned to Sri Lanka from Britain, where he served a nine-month imprisonment for illegal entry.

The pro-LTTE TamilNet website said the LTTE carried out the attack.

"A commando unit of the LTTE attacked a key paramilitary camp of TMVP Karuna faction, killing four operatives and capturing six gunmen from the camp," TamilNet said, adding eight assault rifles were also seized.

The attack came barely two days after the TMVP held a protest rally in the east against the perceived efforts by political parties in Tamil Nadu to stop the military campaign against the Tamil Tigers in the north.


TN should not try to rescue LTTE: Colonel Karuna

COLOMBO: Holding a protest rally in the east against the perceived efforts by some political parties in Tamil Nadu to stop the military campaign against the Tamil Tigers in the north, rebel leader Vinayagamoorthy Muralitharan, known as Karuna Amman, Sunday said "there should be no attempt from Tamil Nadu to rescue LTTE".

"We welcome the support from Tamil Nadu for the Tamil people in Sri Lanka, but the political parties and their leaders should not attempt to rescue the Tamil Tiger rebels, who are facing an imminent defeat in the hands of the security forces in the north," Karuna Amman, who now heads the Tamil Makkal Viduthalai Puligal (TMVP) said at the rally.

Recalling the 1991 assassination of former Indian prime minister Rajiv Gandhi in Tamil Nadu, the former rebel commander had warned that "any effort by Tamil Nadu to save LTTE (Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam) would boomerang on them".

The TMVP organized the rally at the Weber sports ground in the eastern Batticaloa town, located some 300 kilometers away from here, amid tight security.

Karuna Amman was appointed recently as the national list MP of the ruling coalition of President Mahinda Rajapaksa, a few months after he returned to the country from Britain, where he served a nine-month imprisonment for illegal entry.

Although media reports said there is an internal problem brewing between Karuna Amman and the party's second in-command, eastern province Chief Minister Sivanesathurai Chandrakanthan alias Pillaiyan, both of them have appeared on the same stage and made the same appeal.

Commenting on the reports, Karuna Amman has stated that there were many parties with "vested interests trying to undermine the progress of the TMVP" in the east.

"The LTTE is not the only enemy we have. There are many others," he said without naming them.

The TMVP protest has come at a time when the president sent his brother Basil Rajapaksa to New Delhi as his special envoy, aiming to clarify on India's stated concern for safety of civilians caught in the war-zone.