Tamil Guerrillas Massacre 62 Muslims : Sri Lanka: Separatists accuse villagers of being government informants, use knives to mask the sound of carnage.

Tamil separatist guerrillas hacked to death 62 Muslim men, women and children in eastern Sri Lanka on Friday after accusing them of being government informants, officials said.

A Defense Ministry official and a Muslim leader said the village massacre at Nintavur came on the 11th day of an increasingly violent war between Tamil guerrillas and Sri Lankan forces for control of the northeast. The separatists are also believed to have gunned down 278 unarmed policemen last week.

In the north, rebel forces overran one army base and attacked four other strategic installations. Ethnic strife between Tamils and Sinhalese spread to southern and central Sri Lanka. Military officials said at least 139 more people died in fighting that has already left more than 1,400 dead.

The government announced that more than 210,000 people had fled the bloodshed, seeking shelter in temporary refugee camps in schools, temples, churches and mosques across Sri Lanka.

Troops found the bodies of Muslim men, women and children in Nintavur, a village 28 miles south of Batticaloa, a Defense Ministry statement said. Corpses were found floating inside water wells.

Military officials said rebels used knives to kill the villagers instead of guns so the noise would not alert security forces posted nearby.

Survivors said the rebels raided the village early Friday because they feared villagers would reveal the site of their jungle hide-out, according to Mahroof Gani, an official of the Sri Lanka Muslim Congress, an opposition party.

Earlier this week, government attacks in the east pushed the rebels into the jungle.

“It was a slaughter of innocent Muslim men, women and children,” Gani said, calling the rebels “bloodthirsty criminals.”

He said that after killing the villagers, the rebels set fire to a mosque, looted and burned down the village’s 150 houses and left placards written in red paint warning Muslims not to work for the government.

Muslims make up 7% of Sri Lanka’s 16 million people. Sinhalese make up 75% of the population and Tamils, who are fighting for a separate homeland, constitute 18%.