Suspected Tamil rebels fatally shoot 2 civilians in northeast, military says

Associated Press, Fri October 27, 2006 01:25 EDT . COLOMBO, Sri Lanka - (AP) Suspected Tamil rebels shot dead two civilians in northeast Sri Lanka - , the military said Friday, while it denied a claim that it attacked rebel patrol boats off the island's Jaffa peninsula.

Bodies of the two young men apparently in their mid-20s and with their hands tied behind their back were found near the east port town of Trincomalee, the Defense Ministry said in its Web site.

They were believed to have been killed Thursday night, the report said. Tiger spokesman for the area could not be contacted immediately for comment.

Pro-rebel TamilNet Web site said a sea battle off the northern Jaffna peninsula lasted for five hours on Thursday but gave no casualty figures or report of damage.

The Web site said the army's coastal bases backed the naval attack by giving support artillery fire.

``Our navy was not engaged in any fight,'' navy spokesman, Commander D.K.P. Dassanayake said Friday.

``The LTTE wants to create a false impression that our forces are attacking them when both sides are engaging in (peace) talks,'' defense spokesman, Keheliya Rambukwella said about the weekend talks in Geneva, Switzerland.

Rambukwella was calling the rebels by their formal name, the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam or LTTE.

The talks are aimed at salvaging a 2002 cease-fire that has virtually collapsed amid a major upsurge in fighting.

The navy regularly patrol the sea in the northeast to protect from any attack by the rebels' sea wing called the Sea Tigers and also to prevent smuggling of arms and ammunition. TamilNet, quoting an unidentified navy officer, said the navy had ``mistaken Sea Tiger patrol vessels ... as an LTTE attempt to launch an attack on Jaffna.''

The rebels want a self-ruled homeland for the country's minority Tamils. The government says it can offer autonomy, but not a separate state. The civil war flared up in 1983, and 65,000 people were killed until the Norwegian-brokered truce in 2002.

The renewed fighting this year has seen some 2,000 soldiers, rebels and civilians killed.

Sri Lanka Geneva Talks Aim to Revive Peace Process With Rebels

bloomberg.com, Oct 27 04:00. Oct. 27 (Bloomberg) -- Sri Lanka's government and Tamil rebels meet for the first time in eight months to try to revive a peace process that will end the South Asian island nation's two- decade civil war.

President Mahinda Rajapaksa wants the two-day meeting that begins tomorrow in Geneva to be the start of peace negotiations. The success of the talks depends on halting the heaviest fighting in Sri Lanka since Norway brokered a cease-fire four years ago, Daya Master, a spokesman for the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam said in an Oct. 24 telephone interview.

``We have no faith in the peace talks, but are attending at the request of the international community,'' Master said from the rebels' headquarters in Kilinochchi in northern Sri Lanka. ``The outcome of the talks all depends on how much the government is willing to stop violence.''