Life in Ampara comes to standstill

Life in the eastern Ampara district came to a standstill yesterday after protestors backed by the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) organised a strike against an overnight shooting incident by the police which has so far claimed the lives of eight people and left 13 injured, marking the worst incident during the nine-month-old shaky ceasefire.

With tension running high in the district, transport services did not operate as schools, offices and shops remained closed throughout the day. The protest is expected to continue today and spread to two other districts in the eastern province.

Prime Minister Ranil Wickreme-singhe ordered an investigation on the shooting which took place outside a police camp of the Special Task Force in the Kanchankudha area on Wednesday evening.

The prime minister has sent two senior police officials to probe the incident while Scandinavians who are monitoring the current ceasefire agreement between the government and Tamil guerrillas were carrying out their own probe.

"We do not want to go into details until we have a full account of the incident. We will be issuing a statement," said a member of the monitoring team.

Deputy Inspector General of Police Nimal Gunatillake, one of the officers sent to the eastern province, said before leaving that the police were forced to open fire after demonstrators stoned the camp and entered it.

"We had to take cover inside the camp. Some of them were injured in the attack," he said. Gunatillake said the guerrillas had opened fire.

Reports from the area said the guerrillas had organised the demonstration and got the people in the area to surround the camp after claiming that three guerrillas had been badly beaten up by the STF earlier in the day.

But, doctors at the hospital where the guerrillas had got themselves admitted had declared that there were no serious wounds to the three members.

The shooting, the worst since the ceasefire between the guerrillas and the government came into effect in February, has been described as a severe strain on the current Norwegian-backed peace process.

The government in an apparent attempt to downplay the incident said that they would make a comment about the incident only after a full report about the matter is received.

Government spokesman G.L. Peiris told a news conference in Colombo that "until we receive a full report about the investigations we cannot make a comment about it".

There was no immediate reaction from the LTTE but the Tamil Net website described the incident as an attack carried out by the LTTE on a group of civilians who were demonstrating opposite the police camp.