Tamils Kill 42 Civilians in Village Attack
Tamil rebels attacked a fishing village early Friday and killed at least 42 civilians, an official said. Eighteen of the dead were women and children.
The guerrillas fired rocket-propelled grenades and machine guns at a military camp that surrounds the village of Kallarawa, then set fire to the camp and huts where 65 Sinhalese and Muslim families live, a military official said.
Most of the 40 soldiers who guard the isolated village 155 miles northeast of Colombo were searching nearby jungles when the assault occurred. None were injured.
It was the worst Tamil guerrilla attack on a village since October, 1992, when 146 Muslims were killed in Palliyagodella, and it comes five weeks after the rebels broke a three-month cease-fire and ended peace talks with the Sri Lankan government.
Since then, they have escalated their attacks, using suicide scuba divers to destroy two warships with bombs and surface-to-air missiles to down warplanes.
Tamil rebels often attack villages of Sinhalese and Muslim people, who oppose the guerrillas, in areas of Sri Lanka where the Tamils want a homeland.
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