The area, the only truly multi-ethnic part of the island republic, saw horrendous blood-letting in a two-decade civil war which was halted by a 2002 ceasefire.

Now, all-too familiar intercommunal tensions have started to resurface.

In a village by a military base near the northeastern port of Trincomalee, Pannathurai Malika said families from the Sinhalese majority and the Tamil and Muslim minorities had been able to live alongside each other until late December.

"Then, one soldier was killed in the village," said Malika, a 47-year-old Tamil woman who used to own a general store.

"The Sinhalese people in the village said the Tamil families had conspired to kill him. One night, there were six shots fired at my house."

Days later, after the almost exclusively Sinhalese military professed ignorance over the attacks on Tamil villagers, all 30 Tamil and Muslim families fled to a nearby church, leaving their village -- set up 16 years ago as an ethnic co-operation pilot project -- to the Sinhalese.

Malika's shop, damaged in the shooting, was left shuttered.

Sri Lanka's north is almost exclusively Hindu Tamil, while the south is predominantly Sinhalese, who are mainly Buddhist. The Muslims, who live mostly in the east, also speak Tamil but many consider themselves a separate community.