High School Athletes Buried in Sri Lanka

By KRISHAN FRANCIS

COLOMBO, Sri Lanka (AP) — Students and families mourned Wednesday for seven high school baseball players and their coach, whose killing in a suicide attack at a train station devastated their school and left many questioning the cost of Sri Lanka's civil war.

Classmates carried 17-year-old Rajaratnam Ratheeswaran's coffin to a Colombo cemetery, where Hindu rituals were performed before his burial. The boy was dressed in his black school blazer, and a certificate he received for playing baseball was placed in the coffin, which was draped in his school's black-and-gold flag.

"It's a sorrowful moment for the school," said Asoka Hewage, the school's principal. "Child rights and human rights groups must raise this with the fighting sides and ask them not to kill innocent children."

As fighting between government forces and Tamil separatists has escalated in the jungles of the north in recent months, suspected rebels have waged a string of attacks on buses, train stations and other civilian targets, the military said.

The attack Sunday killed 15 people, including the coach and more than half the baseball team from Colombo's prestigious D.S. Senanayake school. The school held a viewing for the slain students Tuesday before many of them were buried in separate funerals Wednesday.

"These killings must end by some means. We should not see other children suffering the same fate," said Nihal Peiris, whose nephew Thiwanka Thisera, 17, was among those killed.

The baseball players had just returned from a weekend tournament in the city of Kandy when the attacker blew herself up, officials said. The other six members of the team returned a day early and escaped the attack,

"It is unbelievable, I can't find words to describe my sorrow," team captain Kirana Jayawardana told The Associated Press.

President Mahinda Rajapaksa sent an aide to read a message vowing revenge against the Tamil Tiger rebels, but Ratheeswaran's mother, Wasantha, refused to accept the letter when the emissary tried to hand it to her.

"Publish this in the papers, but give me my son back," she wailed.

The Tamil Tigers have not responded to accusations they were behind the railway bombing as well as two recent bus bombings that killed at least 32 other people. The rebel group, accused of hundreds of bombings and suicide attacks, is listed as a terror organization in the United States and the European Union.

Amnesty International said in a statement Tuesday that the government and the rebels were "failing to comply with their obligations under international humanitarian law and are killing civilians on an increasingly regular basis."

The Tamil Tigers have been fighting since 1983 for an independent homeland for ethnic minority Tamils after decades of being marginalized by Sinhalese-dominated governments. More than 70,000 people have died in the violence.

Source: AP