Sri Lanka Reports 33 Tamil Rebels Killed

Only five days after Sri Lankan President Junius R. Jayewardene offered new peace proposals aimed at ending the government’s bloody ethnic conflict with Tamil rebels, a navy patrol boat fired on a small craft Monday off the western coast, killing at least 33 Tamils, a military spokesman said.

The spokesman for the joint military command said that all of the victims were members of the Peoples Liberation of Tamil Eelam and the Tamil Eelam Liberation Organization, two Tamil separatist groups. The conflict has claimed at least 4,000 lives since 1983.

“Eelam” is the name of the homeland sought by the rebels, who are members of the Hindu and Christian Tamil minority in the island nation, which has a majority of Sinhalese Buddhists.

Bomb Kills Four

Later Monday, the military spokesman said, four civilians were killed and 19 injured in the explosion of a time bomb in the northern city of Vavuniya. The government blamed Tamil separatists.

A military spokesman also reported that government troops backed by helicopters killed seven Tamil separatist guerrillas trying to block roads in Jaffna province over the weekend.

After that encounter, more rebels tried to blast bridges along the 249-mile highway linking Colombo to the provincial capital of the province, the spokesman said.

Greater Autonomy Urged

Diplomatic observers here report that more than 100 people have been killed since last Wednesday, when Jayewardene proposed new peace initiatives, including greater autonomy for Tamil-majority provinces.

The peace initiatives were sought by neighboring India, which has acted as an intermediary between the government and the rebels. Earlier, an Indian spokesman hailed the Jayewardene proposals, which included granting Tamil areas the right to tax and police their own territory, as the “most positive step yet” in the ongoing conflict.

Last week in New Delhi, Indian officials met with moderate Tamil political leaders about the new proposals. On Monday, one of the five main rebel groups, the Eelam Revolutionary Organization of Students, agreed to “officially consider the proposal,” according to sources here.

Effect on Peace Process

However, a senior Indian diplomat involved in the peace negotiations said he fears that the recent violence is jeopardizing the process.

“Both the governments of India and Sri Lanka were prepared for some residual violence continuing,” the diplomat said. “But this sort of outburst and trigger-happy action can upset the very delicate prolonged process.”

In the Monday incident off the coast, rebels in a fiberglass boat fired on the navy patrol boat, which returned fire and sank the craft, military spokesmen said. No navy casualties were reported.

From India to Sri Lanka

The military said the only Tamil to survive the attack told authorities that the boat was on its way to Sri Lanka from a rebel base in the Indian state of Tamil Nadu.

Sri Lanka has long charged that India has harbored Tamil rebels on its shores. More than 135,000 Tamil refugees from the civil conflict live in Tamil Nadu, a state with a population of 50 million that shares religious, linguistic and cultural ties with the Tamil minority on Sri Lanka.

About 3 million Tamils live on Sri Lanka, compared to more than 11 million Sinhalese.