Aid Workers Slain in Sri Lanka Buried

Seventeen slain workers for the international aid agency Action Against Hunger were buried Tuesday in the eastern port town of Trincomalee amid continuing violence in Sri Lanka.

The bodies of the one Muslim and 16 Tamils were found in Mutur, just south of Trincomalee. They were doing post-tsunami relief work for the agency when fighting broke out between Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam rebels and government troops last week.

Fifteen of the bodies were found Friday, most of them lying face down and bearing bullet wounds. Two more were found late Monday in a car, apparently killed while trying to flee the violence.

The slayings sparked international condemnation, and the government has ordered an investigation.

In the capital, Colombo, a van carrying a former Tamil lawmaker opposed to the Tigers exploded in front of a girls school, killing an occupant and a 3-year-old girl outside, a Tamil politician said.

The apparent target of the attack, S. Sivathasan of the Eelam People’s Democratic Party, was injured, party leader Douglas Devananda said. He blamed the Tamil Tigers for the bombing.

The rebels did not immediately comment.

The Tamil Tigers, who began fighting in 1983 for a separate homeland for the country’s 3.2 million minority Tamils, oppose the party.

Early today, the government said that troops reopened a disputed reservoir that was the focus of weeks of fierce fighting with Tamil Tiger rebels.

The rebels announced Tuesday that they had lifted their blockade of the canal, which supplies about 60,000 people in government-held villages in northeastern Sri Lanka.

But the government said today that the waterway was reopened only after a “limited military operation” by its troops. There was no way to immediately reconcile the accounts.