Sri Lankan Tamils Kill 20 Villagers; 2-Day Death Toll at 32

Tamil terrorists killed 20 Sinhalese villagers in the second massacre in the Trincomalee district in two days, bringing the reported death toll to 32, officials said today.

Few details were immediately available, but the Defense Ministry’s Joint Operations Command in Trincomalee said the latest killings took place Saturday night or early today.

In the earlier attack, on Friday night and Saturday morning, witnesses and soldiers said Tamil terrorists killed 12 Sinhalese villagers, including four women and two children.

Those victims, killed on the eve of a Buddhist festival, lived in two hamlets in eastern Trincomalee and in one just south in Batticaloa.

The minority Tamils, who are mostly Hindu, complain of discrimination by the majority Sinhalese, most of whom are Buddhist. Moderate Tamils want more autonomy for their communities, but extremists want a separate nation in northeast Sri Lanka.

Government and army officials said the attacks apparently were intended to drive Sinhalese from the area. The rebels claim the government is encouraging Sinhalese to settle in Tamil areas to reduce the Tamil concentration.

The Defense Ministry took foreign journalists by plane from Colombo, the capital of the island nation, to Trincomalee on Saturday to see the bodies of five of the victims at one nearby village, Seruwila.

There, a villager told of losing four members of his family--his wife, 4-year-old son, brother and sister-in-law--on Friday night when about 20 terrorists burst from the jungle, firing rifles, and then fled. He said he escaped because he was outside drawing water.

The fifth Seruwila victim was an elderly man shot to death on a road.

In Kallar, in Batticaloa district, about 10 terrorists attacked a Sinhalse hut, killing a woman. They took her child from her arms and killed it with a machete, residents and a government agent said.

The third attack was on Gomarankaduwela village near Trincomalee, where five Sinhalese were killed, the government said. It gave no details.