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Thousands homeless after Sri Lanka air assault

COLOMBO (AFP) - Thousands of people have been left homeless in northeastern Sri Lanka after government air strikes on suspected Tamil Tiger rebel positions, the rebels and a UN official said.

"More than 40,000 people have been displaced and are languishing as refugees," the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) said in a statement that accused the international community of ignoring the refugees' plight.

"They are terrorised. Normalcy in civilian life has been utterly destroyed."

Lyndon Jeffels, spokesman for the United Nations refugee agency, said staff could not confirm the figure of 40,000 but he said it was clear that thousands of people were on the move.

"Certainly it seems that there is a very significant displacement as a consequence of the aerial bombardment," Jeffels told BBC radio.

The UNHCR official said local authorities in Trincomalee district had also issued a figure of 40,000 people on the move but "we haven't been able to verify because we simply don't have access to this area."

Jeffels said the situation in northeast Sri Lanka was extremely tense and most humanitarian workers were confined to their homes.

The military, saying it was acting in self-defence, launched the bombardments from Russian and Israeli-made jets after a woman pretending to be pregnant blew herself up at army headquarters in the capital, about 260 kilometers (160 miles) from Trincomalee on Tuesday.

The suicide bombing targeted the head of the army, leaving him severely wounded. He was among 30 people hurt while 10 others were killed.

After that bombing, three people died and 13 were wounded when the Tigers fired mortars against a naval detachment in the Muttur area, the defence ministry said Wednesday.

A ministry spokesman denied earlier military reports that the civilians had been killed when an Israeli-built Kfir jet accidentally dropped a bomb on Muttur jetty while attacking suspected Tamil Tiger positions.

The pro-rebel Tamilnet website reported 12 other civilians died when government warplanes struck the rebel-held Sampur area late Tuesday in retaliation for the suicide bombing in Colombo.

"While the government has openly declared war, and is carrying out these reprehensible murders of Tamil civilians, the international community is turning a blind eye," a rebel statement said.

"It has failed to condemn these acts, it has failed to put pressure on the government to stop it."

Residents said Thursday that the air strikes and long-range shelling of suspected Tamil Tiger positions by government forces had stopped.

The government said it would continue to retaliate if attacked.

Two sailors died Thursday in a Claymore mine attack, believed planted by Tiger rebels, as they rode a motorcycle on the Jaffna Peninsula, police said.

The relative calm was reported as Sri Lanka's peace broker Norway expressed hopes the island would step back from the brink of full-scale war.

Top peace envoy Erik Solheim said Oslo was trying to salvage the peace process aimed at ending three decades of ethnic bloodshed that has claimed more than 60,000 lives.

Solheim said he did not believe the latest violence signified the end of a ceasefire in place since February 2002.

His deputy, Jon Hanssen-Bauer, left Colombo Thursday after failing to get the two parties to agree to hold talks in Geneva on saving their ceasefire, Norwegian diplomats in Colombo said.

US credit ratings agency Standard and Poor's said it had downgraded Sri Lanka's rating outlook from stable to negative due to the escalating unrest.

At least 80 people have died in bombings in the past two weeks while Tamil rebels say 70 civilians have been killed by pro-government militia or security forces, a charge denied by the military.

The Tigers, who are fighting for a Tamil homeland, last week indefinitely pulled out of planned peace talks in Switzerland, accusing the government of attacks on Tamil civilians and complaining about transport arrangements.

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