Muttur town empties amid heavy fighting.

Joined the rest of the humanitarian community in condemning of the massacre of the 17 ACF staff members in Muthur, the Tamil Rehabilitation Organisation (TRO) said the failure to investigate and punish those responsible for attacks on its own aid workers in the past had contributed to a climate of impunity.

15 lined up on the floor and shot, two killed in their car. All but one, Tamils.

Sri Lanka’s hardline Sinhala parties allied to President Mahinda Rajapakse this week urged him to ‘eliminate’ the Liberation Tigers’ held area of eastern Trincomalee, reinforcing their parallel call for him to tear up the 2002 Ceasefire Agreement.

For some time, the ultra-Sinhala nationalist Janatha Vimukthi Perumana (JVP), has been demanding that President Rajapkse, whom it helped elect last November, launch military attacks on the LTTE.

International truce monitors came under Sri Lankan artillery fire on Sunday as the prepared to open the Maavil Aru sluice gates in a deal clinched by Norwegian Envoy Jon-Hanssen Bauer.

The head of the Sri Lanka Monitoring Mission (SLMM), Maj. Gen. Ulf Henricsson and another monitor, Ove Jansen, narrowly escaped with their lives.

In the heaviest bombardment of the past few weeks, Sri Lankan artillery hammered civilian areas in LTTE-controlled parts of Trincomalee, prompting tens of thousands of displaced Tamils to flee towards Vaharai to the south.

“I can’t see anyone getting back to peace talks until a clear change in the balance of power on the ground has been accepted, and likewise with the ceasefire.”

Analysts say the real reasons for the fierce fighting could run deeper than the government’s explanation that it has launched a “humanitarian gesture” aimed at ending the Tamil Tiger blockade of the Maavilaru waterway.

Categorically rejecting the accusation by the Sri Lankan government that Liberation Tigers had abducted and killed Muslim civilians during the fighting in Muthur, the LTTE said Colombo was trying to divert attention from its military setbacks.

Amid reports Sri Lankan troops had shot dead fifteen aid workers in Muttur, the defence ministry in Colombo claimed that the Tigers had massacred at least 100 Muslim men whom they suspected had told security forces about the their movements.

‘Now we cannot trust them’

The Tamil Rehabilitation Organisation (TRO), the largest relief organisation in the Northeast, issued an urgent appeal to the international community after the displacement of tens of thousands of Muslim and Tamil people.

Amid heavy fighting between the Sri Lanka Army and the Liberation Tigers in Trincomalee district, ‘low-intensity’ violence continued in the other Northeast districts also.

A senior commander of the Special Task Force (STF), the elite counter-insurgency arm of the Sri Lankan police, was mortally wounded Monday when his vehicle was ambushed by attackers with a claymore mine.

Senior Superintendent of Police (SSP) Upul Seneviratne was seriously wounded in the blast at Digana, 10 km southeast of Kandy, around 4:15 a.m. Monday. He succumbed to his wounds at Kandy hospital around 6:20 a.m.

The funeral of cadres of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) and a civilian rural force member killed in a Sri Lanka Air Force (SLAF) airstrike on the LTTE’s Thenaham Conference Centre in Karadiyanaru, Batticaloa district, was held last Sunday.

The eight had been killed, and another four wounded, on Saturday when the SLAF dropped 12 bombs on the centre in three rounds, completely destroying the LTTE’s flagship political centre in the Batticaloa district.