Sri Lanka´s military escalated its bombardment of Tamil Tiger controlled areas this week, killing scores of civilians and wounding hundreds. The attacks came amid preparations for new offensives by the military which also tightened its blockade on LTTE controlled areas.
The head of international truce monitors in Sri Lanka also came under fire when visiting LTTE-controlled areas despite notifying the military before hand.
At least 65 civilians were killed and up to 300 wounded when Sri Lankan artillery hammered a refugee camp in Vaharai in the eastern province on Wednesday, AFP reported, quoting LTTE and medical sources.
The death toll was reported to be rising and could top 100, AFP said.
Amnesty International condemned the attack and called for those responsible to be brought to justice.
"It is appalling that the military should attack a camp for displaced people -- these are civilians who have already been forced from their homes because of the conflict," Amnesty International's Asia Pacific Director Purna Sen said.
"We condemn all attacks on civilians and are particularly saddened and shocked to see such a large-scale attack on civilians just days after the government's announcement of its Commission of Inquiry into human rights abuses."'
Sri Lanka's military did not comment on the attack, but suggesting there may have been civilian deaths, blame the LTTE for provoking it.
"It was what the Tigers wanted -- to cause damages to the innocent Tamil civilians by provoking the army to retaliate for the Tigers' sporadic and indiscriminate shelling," the ministry of defence said in a statement on Wednesday.
The LTTE said the Sri Lankan military was demonstrating that it could kill Tamil civilians at will irrespective of international opinion.
"Sri Lankan military's intention was to teach the Tamils the lesson that they, the military, can kill refugees in such numbers, and no one can stop them," the LTTE's Peace Secreterait said.
Underpinning this view , the Sri Lankan Army (SLA) fired a barrage in the vicinity of the head of the internationally staffed Sri Lanka Monitoring Mission (SLMM), Major General Lars Johan Sølvberg, as he was on an official visit to the LTTE-held Pooneryn region.
SLA fired artillery shells exploded 200 meters behind in Pooneryn jetty area while a team of SLMM and LTTE officials was visiting the site. While they were returning, SLA artillery shells exploded 20 meters away.
The SLMM visit was to study the feasibility of the Sri Lankan government's suggestion that opening the Pooneryin-Sangupitty Road was an alternative to opening the A9 highway.
The Sri Lankan military is refusing to open the A9 which was closed amid heavy fighting in Jaffna in August.
After two months of embargo, 600,000 people in the Jaffna peninsula are desperately short of food and other essential supplies.
The LTTE says the Sri Lankan government is preparing major invasions of its controlled areas and has warned of an all out war breaking out unless Colombo is restrained.
Even before this week's bombardments, the SLMM said over a thousand Tamil civilians have been killed since early this year.
Civilians have died both by bombardment and in a campaign of abductions and extra-judicial killings by government death squads and Army-backed paramiltiaries.
The Tigers have also been blamed for the killings of civilians linked to the military and anti-LTTE paramilitary groups.
Wednesday's massacre of displaced civilians suggests the cycle of violence is worsening with the February 2002 truce between the Sri Lankan government and the LTTE all but discarded - even though both sides say they are committed to it.
Sri Lankan artillery and rockets hit a school in Kathiraveli, a coastal hamlet 15 km north of Vaaharai, where five thousand civilians displaced by earlier military offensives were sheltering.
"It was a big attack and we have 45 dead bodies,'' Seevaratnam Puleedevan, head of the LTTE Peace Secretariat, earlier told The Associated Press by satellite phone.
Wednesday's artillery attack was the worst in terms of Tamil civilian casualties since the signing of a truce in 2002., surpassing the toll on August 14, when a Sri Lankan air raid killed 54 Tamil teenage schoolgirls and four teaching staff in LTTE-held Mullaitivu.
