'65 civilians killed in Lanka army firing'
Reuters, afp, Colombo
At least 65 civilians were killed and over 100 injured yesterday in heavy shelling by government forces in eastern Sri Lanka, Tamil rebels and local residents said, marking the heaviest reported casualties since the collapse of peace talks last month.The military said the Tigers had been firing at military camps in the area since early morning, injuring five soldiers, and that troops had retaliated with artillery and mortar bomb fire, but had no details of any civilian casualties. A team of Nordic truce monitors was on the way to the site of the incident in Kathiraveli in the eastern district of Batticaloa, the latest in a litany of clashes amid a new chapter of the island's two-decade civil war. "They have hit a camp for displaced. So far 65 have died and 125 are injured -- all civilians," S Puleedevan, head of the Tigers' Peace Secretariat, told Reuters by satellite phone. Puleedevan said he was visiting the northern town of Pooneryn, near the army-held Jaffna peninsula, with the head of the island's Nordic truce monitoring mission, and that the army was also firing artillery at them there. The Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) and the Sri Lankan military have clashed repeatedly in the north and east in recent months, since peace talks collapsed in late October. The air force has repeatedly bombed Tiger areas since the talks failed.
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