Sri Lanka Party Official Murdered

Sinhalese terrorists assassinated a senior leader of Sri Lanka’s ruling party Friday as part of their drive to disrupt June elections for governing councils in the island’s Buddhist-dominated south, police said.

Three gunmen, armed with AK-47 assault rifles, opened fire at a car carrying Nandalal Fernando, the general secretary of the island’s ruling United National Party, as he was being driven to work from his residence in Colombo’s wealthy southern suburb of Wellawatte, police said.

At least 14 bullets hit the vehicle, police said, but the driver sped past the assailants and drove to Colombo General Hospital, where the critically wounded Fernando died after a two-hour operation.

Assassins Escape

The gunmen escaped.

Fernando, 38, held the fourth-highest post in President Junius R. Jayewardene’s ruling party. The party’s chairman, Harsha Abeyeywardene, was assassinated in a similar attack last December.

Police blamed the slaying on the radical leftist People’s Liberation Front, which has killed more than 300 people in 11 months and fiercely opposes a peace accord signed last July between Sri Lanka and India aimed at ending a Tamil rebellion in the north and east.

Discrimination Charged

The pact granted some self-rule to the Tamil areas by creating semi-autonomous councils in each province. Tamils, who account for 18% of Sri Lanka’s 16 million people, say they are discriminated against in jobs and education. Fernando, like Jayewardene, belongs to the Sinhalese ethnic group that controls the government.