Two Sri Lanka police killed escorting Japanese

Two Sri Lankan police were killed on Wednesday while escorting Japanese aid workers and three civilians were killed in crossfire between the military and Tamil Tiger rebels.

The two police were killed and seven others, including three civilians, were wounded when a roadside bomb exploded at the rear of a Japanese aid convoy visiting an agricultural irrigation project in Vavunathivu, northeast of Colombo.

"There were some Japanese officials. Police were escorting them," police Deputy Inspector General N.K. Ilangakoon told Reuters, saying the convoy was hit by a fragmentation mine.

The Japanese were not hurt in the blast, which occurred after the main convoy had already passed, Ilangakoon said.

Tiger rebels, who are fighting for an independent homeland in Sri Lanka's north and east, frequently target police and the military with claymore fragmentation mines.

Separately, the army said three fishermen were killed and three others wounded after they were caught in crossfire in the north.

Sri Lanka's conflict has intensified since 2006, when the military launched fresh offensives as a truce agreement broke down. The six-year truce was formally scrapped in January and Nordic monitors expelled, opening a new phase of a war that has killed more than 70,000 people since 1983.

Helicopter gunships attacked rebel bases in the northern Mannar district in support of ground troops, who have been engaged in bitter fighting since last week, the military said.

Air force jets also bombed a Tiger boatyard in the northeast, where a navy attack vessel was sunk last week by what rebels said was a suicide squad. The navy said the boat was sunk by a Tiger sea mine, with 10 crew still missing and feared dead.

The yard, where the Tigers build and repair fast boats to target the navy and land weapons, was destroyed in the bombing, although there was no information on whether any Tiger fighters had been killed, the military said. A spokesman for The Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam was not immediately available for comment on the latest clashes in a 25-year civil war the military has vowed to end by December.

Source: Reuters