29 Monks Massacred in Sri Lanka Bus Ambush

Tamil separatist guerrillas ambushed a bus in eastern Sri Lanka and fatally shot 33 people, including 29 saffron-robed Buddhist monks, the government said today.

More than 50 assailants dressed in military uniforms and armed with automatic weapons stopped the bus near a village about 125 miles east of Colombo on Monday night, a military official said. The attackers ordered the monks and four others out of the bus and shot them to death, he said.

At least 11 other bus passengers were wounded, the official said.

He said the monks were returning to the Buddhist city of Kandy from an ordination ceremony in a nearby village.

Arantalawa, the village where the ambush took place, was raided Feb. 7 by Tamil guerrillas who killed 28 Sinhalese civilians.

Last month, 127 people were killed in a similar bus ambush, and a car bombing at a crowded bus station left as many as 180 people dead. The government blamed those two attacks on Tamil rebels.

Tamils, who are mostly Hindus, make up 18% of Sri Lanka’s population of 16 million. They allege discrimination by the Sinhalese Buddhists, who make up 75% and control the government and army. Most Tamils seek some degree of autonomy for the northern and eastern provinces, but the militants demand an independent homeland.

The massacre of the monks was announced as Sri Lanka’s Cabinet met in emergency session to discuss a diplomatic crisis with India.

India on Monday charged that “hundreds” of Tamil civilians were dying in military raids in Jaffna, a peninsula on the northern tip of Sri Lanka, and others were suffering extreme hardship because of the government’s fuel blockade of the peninsula.

It said India’s Red Cross would begin sending food and medicine by boat Wednesday to the city of Jaffna, which is about 40 miles from India’s southern coast.

The Sri Lankan government said it “strongly objects to any unilateral action by the government of India and any such action will be considered a violation of the independence, sovereignty and territorial integrity of Sri Lanka.”