Sri Lanka Rebel Attacks Kill 24

Villagers in this hamlet were jolted from their sleep before dawn Thursday by the bursts of grenades and machine guns.

Many fled into the jungle. But 24 others, including a 6-day-old infant, were slaughtered in their huts here, and in Tammannewa, a neighboring village in northeast Sri Lanka.

It was the fifth time in six days that Tamil rebels have attacked villages of ethnic Sinhalese. Police say 109 villagers have been massacred, some with machetes.

The military suspects the rebels are trying to divert government forces from their offensive against Jaffna, on a peninsula further north.

But the massacres threaten to provoke a Sinhalese backlash that could engulf the rest of the country in an ethnic war until now largely confined to the north.

The Tamils accuse the majority Sinhalese of discriminating against them, and have been fighting for a homeland since 1983.

On the Jaffna peninsula, the government’s offensive continued. Planes bombed a village Thursday, killing 10 civilians, the government said.