Sri Lankan aid workers executed

Fifteen local aid staff working on post-tsunami rebuilding have been found executed in northeast Sri Lanka after heavy fighting, the main umbrella body for aid agencies in the country said yesterday.

There had been reports and rumours that the local aid workers had been killed. The Consortium for Humanitarian Agencies (CHA) said that one of the relief teams that reached the battered town of Mutur had found the corpses in an aid agency office.

"They found them in the office on the ground, lying face down - executed," said CHA chief Jeevan Thiagarajah.

He said it was not clear who had killed them. Mutur town has seen days of fighting between the government and Tamil Tiger rebels. Sri Lankan artillery pounded Tamil Tiger territory yesterday in a heavy and prolonged barrage hours after the rebels offered to give in on a key government demand but warned new attacks would spark war.

The closure of a rebel-held sluice gate providing water to government territory last month prompted the first ground fighting since a 2002 ceasefire. Yesterday, the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) said they would re-open it.

But shortly after, as the head of the unarmed Nordic-staffed ceasefire monitoring mission, retired Swedish Major General Ulf Henricsson, headed towards the sluice south of the northeastern port of Trincomalee, army artillery opened fire.

"(The government) have the information that the LTTE has made this offer," said Tommy Lekenmyr, chief of staff for the Sri Lanka Monitoring Mission (SLMM).

"It is quite obvious they are not interested in water. They are interested in something else. We will blame this on the government."

The government said that the Tigers must leave the area of the sluice gate, which officially lies in government territory but which military sources said was in an area effectively controlled by the rebels.