Sri
Lankan Air Force Bombing
Kills Scores Of Students
By Sarath Kumara
15 August 2006
World
Socialist Web
Amid
escalating fighting between government forces and the Liberation Tigers
of Tamil Eelam (LTTE), the Sri Lankan air force bombed a school compound
in the LTTE-held Mullaittivu district yesterday, killing 61 students
and injuring more than 100.
The LTTE peace secretariat
said the students were mainly girls between 15 and 18 attending a two-day
residential course on first aid at the Chencholai children’s home
in Vallipunam when warplanes attacked the buildings around 7.00 a.m.
The wounded were taken to the Mullaittivu and Kilinochchi hospitals,
but a number died later.
The military has sought to
deny responsibility for this crime with lies and evasions. Defence sources
initially admitted to Reuters that the air force had attacked LTTE-held
territory in Mulaitivu, but refused to give any details of the targets.
As news of the bombing was publicised internationally, air force spokesman
Group Captain Ajantha Silva told Associated Press that the military
had proof that this place was an LTTE base.
In its statement, the defence
ministry denied that the air force had attacked civilian targets. “The
Sri Lankan Air Force bombed at pre-identified LTTE gun positions and
LTTE camps in the Mullaittivu area this morning, Monday August 14,”
it declared. “Air Force personnel confirmed that the bombings
were precise and well targeted.”
Speaking on Sirasa TV, Ulf
Henricsson, head of the Norwegian-led Sri Lanka Monitoring Mission (SLMM),
contradicted the military’s claims. He said he had seen the bodies
of children when he visited the scene yesterday. At least 10 bombs had
been dropped, including an unexploded one. Henricsson said he saw no
LTTE military camps in the area.
UN spokeswoman Orla Clinton
told the media that investigators confirmed at least 19 students had
been killed in the attack, adding that the agency was investigating
further. “What we know at the moment is that these seem to have
been students between 16 and 18, A-level students, from the Kilinochichi
and Mullaittivu areas, who were on a two-day training course in first
aid,” she said.
Confronted with mounting
evidence of a slaughter, the government denied that children were being
deliberately targetted, accusing the LTTE of using them as “human
shields” and even suggesting they were receiving military training.
“It is a lie to say that schoolchildren were targetted,”
government spokesperson Chandrapala Liyanage told AFP. “The air
force bombed a LTTE training centre. We don’t know if they moved
child soldiers there.”
It is not clear whether the
attack was deliberate. The buildings had previously been used as an
orphanage and, if as the military claim, the targets were “pre-identified,”
the presence of a large number of children would have been obvious.
Having initiated offensive operations against the LTTE, the bombing
could well be part of the military’s efforts to terrorise the
Tamil minority in the North and East.
Over the weekend, fighting
spread to the northern Jaffna peninsula with a number of LTTE attacks
on army positions, including an artillery barrage on the strategic Palaly
air base. Defence sources told AFP that 60 soldiers had been killed
since last Friday as the army sought to recapture bunkers and ground
lost to the LTTE. The government claimed to have killed 200 LTTE fighters.
The attack in Mullaittivu
was not an isolated incident. On Sunday morning, 15 civilians were killed
and another 20 wounded by rocket and artillery fire from the Palaly
base. They were among hundreds of people taking refuge at St. Philip
Nari Church at Allaipiddy about 20 kilometres from Jaffna town. The
military was engaged in a battle to regain control of parts of the area
lost to the LTTE.
Christian Caritas director
Kilinochchi G. Peter told the Catholic newsagency: “[A]n artillery
shell hit the church, where people were seeking shelter from the fighting.
There are many houses around the church, and people ran to the church
to escape the shelling, but one fell on the church. Nobody can enter
the area now because of the curfew and fighting is still going on.”
The Sri Lankan Red Cross Society reported that their workers had brought
several of the injured to the Jaffna hospital.
A government spokesman repeated
the same justification for the military’s attacks on civilian
areas, declaring that the LTTE were “mingling with civilians and
calling in artillery fire” from the army.
The most savage attacks on
civilian targets in the recent fighting have been on the eastern town
on Muttur. After the LTTE entered and captured parts of the town on
August 2, the military unleashed sustained artillery and rocket barrages.
Scores of civilians were killed in the shelling, many more were injured
and an estimated 40,000 people fled the town.
The LTTE’s attempt
to capture Muttur was aimed at cutting the army’s supply lines
from military bases in Trincomalee and the army’s operation to
capture the Mavilaru irrigation sluice gate further south. While insisting
that its offensive was limited in scope, the government was well aware
that the intrusion into LTTE territory would provoke broader fighting.
Over the weekend, the conflict
spread to the North and there have been several attacks in the capital
of Colombo. On Saturday, gunmen shot dead the deputy director of the
government’s peace secretariat, Ketheshwaran Loganthan, outside
his house in the Colombo suburb of Dehiwela. Yesterday, a bomb blast
killed at least seven people, including several army commandos escorting
the motorcade of Pakistani High Commissioner Bashir Wali Mohamed in
central Colombo. The high commissioner said he was being targetted because
Pakistan had provided military assistance to Sri Lanka.