Sri Lanka Says Air Raid Kills 80 Tamil Rebels

Government planes bombed Tamil rebels and the guerrillas attacked soldiers Wednesday, adding more than 100 dead to a toll that has reached nearly 400 in six days of civil war.

The government said that 80 Tamil rebels were killed in the air raid. A military source reported at least 36 soldiers and police slain in guerrilla raids and said eight rebels were killed.

The attacks by both sides came a day after a car bomb tore Colombo’s main bus station apart, killing at least 106 people and wounding 295. Government and military figures put the death toll since Friday at 374.

Passengers Massacred

Last Friday, Tamil terrorists stopped vehicles in eastern Sri Lanka, pulled passengers out and opened fire, killing 127 people, most of them Sinhalese.

On Monday, Tamil guerrillas killed 15 Sinhalese at a village in the same region.

Friday’s attack abruptly ended a government cease-fire aimed at renewing peace talks in the conflict, which has cost more than 5,500 lives since 1983 when Tamil militants began fighting the Sinhalese majority for an independent state in the northern and eastern sections of this island nation off the southern tip of India.

Unofficial sources said the number of deaths since Friday could surpass 500 when final tolls from the bus terminal bombing and air raid are known.

Bomb Toll May Reach 200

A Health Ministry official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said the count from the bus-terminal bombing might reach 200. Tamil sources said an equal number of people may have been killed in the air raid and shelling Wednesday on the Tamil-dominated Jaffna Peninsula in the north.

The government said civilians probably were included in the Jaffna casualties, which it estimated at 80 dead and 80 wounded. It warned residents of the area to stay away from obvious targets of military action.

More Raids Threatened

Tilak Ratnakara, head of the government’s Media Center, said: “We will continue to strike at militant targets until the civilian killings are stopped and peace negotiations resume.”

The government said its retaliatory air strike was aimed at outposts of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam and the Eelam Revolutionary Organization of Students, which it blamed for the bus station bombing. Both issued denials from their exile headquarters in southern India.

Eelam is what the Tamils would call their separate nation.

Tamils, most of whom are Hindus, make up 18% of Sri Lanka’s 14.8 million people and charge that the majority Sinhalese, nearly all of whom are Buddhists, discriminate against them. The rebels say their only protection would be a separate nation.

Wednesday’s violence included three guerrilla attacks on government forces in the north and east and rioting in Colombo’s main prison, where Sinhalese inmates attacked Tamil convicts.

There was confusion about casualties in the prison riots. A government source said six Tamils were wounded, but a military source reported three killed and three critically wounded.

During anti-Tamil riots in 1983, when the ethnic civil war began, 59 Tamil inmates were killed in the prison.

Tamil Prisoners Moved

Officials said that Tamil prisoners, numbering about 200, were moved to a separate building as a safety precaution.

The government announced that it was continuing a curfew in the Colombo area and imposing one on Trincomalee, an eastern port city whose population is divided almost evenly among Tamils, Sinhalese and Muslims.

Authorities put a round-the-clock curfew on Colombo after the bus terminal bombing, when mobs attacked Tamil-owned shops and bands of Sinhalese youths roamed the streets looking for Tamils. It was lifted for four hours Wednesday morning to allow shopping for necessities.

A military official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said at least one Tamil was killed in the ethnic violence.

Both Sinhalese and Tamils came to Sri Lanka from India, beginning more than 2,000 years ago, and they have a long history of difficult relations.

Tamils began agitating for autonomy after the government made Sinhala the official language in 1956. President Junius R. Jayewardene’s government has proposed provincial councils to give greater autonomy to the north and east but refuses to consider an independent Tamil nation.