The Bishop of Mannar protests to the Vatican over the destruction wreaked by Sri Lanka Navy personnel on Pesalai village and Church.

Sixty-eight people died on Thursday last week after a landmine, allegedly planted by the Liberation Tigers, ripped through a Ceylon Transport Board bus packed with passengers at Kongollewa, in Kebithigollewa.

The Sri Lankan government retaliated by launching air strikes on locations in the East and around Kilinochchi. The Liberation Tigers denied any involvement in the attack, calling it “senseless violence used for political ends”.

Whilst high profile incidents of violence, including a deadly mine blast which hit a bus packed with Sinhalese passengers, the ensuing airstrikes against Tamil areas and the attack on Tamil refugees in a church dominated the headlines, dozens of civilians, Sri Lankan security forces personnel and LTTE cadres have been killed in continuing violence across the Northeast.

As Sri Lanka’s Army steps up raids into Tamil Tiger controlled territory, clashes between its Deep Penetration Unit (DPU) and LTTE forces are becoming more commonplace.

The LTTE captured a Sri Lankan Army soldier attached to the Deep Penetration Unit (DPU), formally knows as Long Range Reconnaissance Patrol (LRRP) unit near Batticaloa Lagoon Friday last week.

“UNICEF in Sri Lanka is calling for immediate action to halt the abduction and forced recruitment of children by the Karuna group.”

The attack on Maj. Gen. Kulatunga, number 3 in the SLA hierarchy, comes two months after a suicide bomber badly wounded Army commander Lt. Gen. Sarath Fonseka and killed eleven of his bodyguards.

Theacknowledgment of a Tamil right to self-rule in their own homeland marks a welcome evolution in US policy.

'The Tamils have already made the biggest concession of all by making a form of self-rule, rather than independence, their aim.”

Playing political football with child soldiers.

At some point in during the peace process, the international community assumed that it was no longer necessary to apply the concept of parity to resolving the Tamil question.

“There are reports that the Indian government is providing radars to the Sri Lankan government, which is waging an undeclared war on Tamils in the island nation and carrying out attacks on civilians.”

A lasting political solution means regional peace

“We call upon the Government of India and people of India to be magnanimous to put the past behind and to approach the ethnic question in a different perspective.”

Nothing has changed since the ‘War for Peace’ ended.