SUSPECTED TAMIL TIGERS KILL A TAMIL FAMILY INCLUDING THREE AND FIFTEEN YEAR OLD CHILDREN SINCE THEY ARE NOT POLITICALLY SYMPATHETIC TO THEM

By Walter Jayawardhana
Five Tamil civilians of a family including a three year old boy and a 15 year girl who were getting ready to celebrate the Hindu New Year in the Eastern Province of Sri Lanka were dragged out of the house by suspected cadres of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) and shot dead.
The victims have been suspected by the Tamil Tigers to be faithful to another Tamil political party opposed by them.
This is the fifth attack by the LTTE during this month on civilians both Tamil and Sinhalese.
LTTE does not allow dissent of opinion in the North and East of the country especially among the Tamils and does not tolerate anybody else other than their proxy party, the The Tamil National Alliance.
The tragic incident happened in Eravur police area , 130 miles East of the capital Colombo and among the dead were three year old boy a 15 year old girl and a 60 year old man who were made to kneel down before they were being shot dead by the LTTE cadres.
Eravur police, who are investigating into the assassinations said, the members of the same family were gunned down, hours before the traditional Tamils were preparing to celebrate the New Year.
Eravur Police said three of the victims died on the spot and three others were admitted to the hospital by the neighbors and two of them succumbed to their gun shot injuries.
Police sources said, it happened at Kanapatthipillainagar, Chenkalady in the Batticaloa district, where the Tamil Tigers have been militarily defeated by the government security forces. The police said the LTTE has started attacking unarmed civilians who are not sympathetic to them.
The police said the victims have been identified as Sinnamutthukumar Sudarshan(03), Sendavan Selvi (15) Vallipuram Rathnasingham (60) , Nadarasa Stanislaus (27) and Gunaselvam (22). A sixth person is still being treated at the Batticaloa teaching hospital in a critical condition.
On April 1, six ethnic Sinhalese workers were gunned down in Batticaloa district while helping to build an orphanage and the next day a bomb blast inside a bus in adjoining Ampara district killed 16 passengers.
Five days later a bus was caught in a roadside bomb blast in Vavuniya district and eight passengers died.
Last Thursday LTTE gunmen stormed a village in Vavuniya and shot dead seven people.
The International Committee of the Red Cross this week expressed grave concern at the increasing civilian deaths in Sri Lanka’s escalating armed conflict .