Sri Lanka Presses Assault on Rebels

COLOMBO, Sri Lanka â€”  Sri Lankan fighter jets and artillery bombarded rebel positions for a second day in the country’s north and east, truce monitors said Friday.

Sri Lanka’s military said that it sank five Tamil Tiger rebel boats after an attack in the island’s northwest today and that two suspected rebel frogmen who landed near the capital were arrested and attempted suicide.

The attacks came as the president pledged to press on with peace efforts after a bus explosion killed 64 people.

The government said Tamil Tiger rebels were behind Thursday’s bus attack -- the worst single act of violence since a 2002 cease-fire. The rebels, meanwhile, contended that the air and artillery strikes showed the military was on a war footing.

As the two sides traded accusations, about 10,000 mourners prayed at a funeral for 61 of the bus victims.

Buddhist monks and Roman Catholic priests led the funeral in the northern town of Kebitigollewa, where the dead women were wrapped in white saris and the men in white sarongs. Fifty-six victims had red paper flowers placed in their open palms before relatives and friends lowered their coffins into mass graves. Other bodies were taken away by relatives for private funerals.

With peace talks largely stalled, the bus attack and retaliatory strikes edged this tropical island nation further toward all-out war. The rebels, known as the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam, have been fighting the Sinhalese-majority government since 1983 to establish a separate homeland in the north and east for the minority Tamils. The conflict killed more than 65,000 people before the 2002 truce.

Air force jets dropped bombs and the army lobbed artillery shells into a rebel-controlled area around the northern town of Kilinochchi throughout Friday, said Thorfinnur Omarsson, spokesman for the Scandinavian mission monitoring the truce.

Sri Lankan troops also shelled Tamil Tiger bases near the eastern ports of Batticaloa and Trincomalee on Thursday and early Friday, Omarsson said. Earlier reports indicated the government attacks were limited to rebel-held areas in the north.

“We don’t know if this is just a limited response or if it might be a move to inflict real damage� on the rebels, Omarsson said.

Rebel leader Seevaratnam Puleedevan said at least eight bombs had been dropped near Kilinochchi, but he could not provide casualty figures.

Despite the airstrikes, President Mahinda Rajapakse said he remained committed to seeking peace with the rebels.