17 Tamil Guerrillas Try Suicide by Cyanide, 10 Die

Seventeen detained members of Sri Lanka’s largest Tamil rebel group, facing charges of killing rival guerrillas, swallowed hidden cyanide capsules today in front of government troops. Ten died, military sources said.

The sources said two Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam rebels were reported in serious condition and five in stable condition after their stomachs were pumped.

The mass suicide attempt by the rebels occurred on the Tarmac of the Palaly military airfield on the northern Jaffna peninsula as the rebels were being escorted to an aircraft for a flight to Colombo to face murder charges, the sources said.

The 17 were arrested Saturday aboard a machine gun-equipped trawler intercepted by a Sri Lankan naval patrol off the northern Jaffna town of Velvetturai. The murder charges were in connection with rebel battles against rival guerrilla groups, apparently aimed at preserving the LTTE’s dominance following a peace accord designed to end Sri Lanka’s 4-year-old civil war.

At least 120 people were killed in the rival fighting.

“They were being marched to a Sri Lankan air force aircraft when they pulled out their vials of cyanide from chains around their necks and swallowed them,” one source told United Press International.

“They collapsed on the Tarmac and were immediately taken to the military hospital,” the source said.

A Defense Ministry source said an inquiry was ordered into the mass suicide. The military sources said the prisoners were visited earlier today by a rebel delegation that may have slipped them the cyanide capsules.

Members of the LTTE, the largest and most adamant of the rebel groups demanding the creation of an independent Tamil nation in Sri Lanka’s north and east, are known to wear cyanide capsules around their necks for use to avoid interrogation if captured.