UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan was very concerned about the
increasing violence in Sri Lanka and the escalation that had
resulted from a water dispute in the northeast, a UN spokesman said
yesterday in a press briefing.
The secretary-general was disturbed by reports that there have
been many civilian victims, including children, as well as large
displacements of people.
Annan called on parties to allow humanitarian agencies unimpeded
access to the affected population. The secretary-general noted the
efforts underway by Norway to resolve the conflict, and called on
the parties to cease hostilities immediately to create a favorable
climate for negotiations over the water issue.
He reiterated his appeal to the government of Sri Lanka and the
Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam to resume peace talks.
The rebels and army fought with artillery, mortar bombs and
small arms fire yesterday in and around the town of Muttur in the
eastern district of Trincomalee. The fighting was sparked off by
the current spat between the rebels and the government over the
shutdown of a sluice gate.
The fighting has overshadowed the fragile Norwegian-backed
ceasefire, and the two sides, however, keep on denying claims that
a full-scale war had returned to the island's north and eastern
provinces for the first time since the truce accord of February
2002.
Shells hit Sri Lanka schools; 18 dead
Artillery fire hit three schools yesterday in Muttur where
residents had taken shelter to escape fighting, killing 18 people,
military officials said.
Maj. Upali Rajapakse, a military spokesman, blamed Tamil Tiger
rebels for the artillery fire in Muttur, but the pro-rebel TamilNet
website blamed government forces for at least one of the school
attacks, where 10 people died. The rebels have made no mention of
the other two schools.
(Xinhua News Agency, Chinadaily.com.cn via agencies August 4,
2006)
