As the 2002 ceasefire agreement came to an end, having been unilaterally abrogated by Sri Lanka’s militaristic government, and in the midst of the ongoing targeting of civilians in the Vanni, the conflict spread south, claiming over 40 casualties in two days in the central district of Moneragala, east of the capital Colombo.
On the day the ceasefire agreement ended, a roadside bomb ripped through a bus killing 27 people and wounding dozens in the town of Buttala. A second claymore targeting an armoured personnel carrier injured 3 soldiers.
In yet another incident, two farmers were killed by a group of armed men in the Buttala area on the same morning. The following day, ten armed home-guards were gunned down in two separate incidents.
Thirteen women and school children were among the victims of the bus bomb, which went off at around 7.30 a.m. Hospital officials said they were treating seven children for minor injuries while a 14-year-old girl who suffered a head wound was flown to Colombo and was in intensive care. They said no children were killed, reporter Reuters.
One bus passenger described hearing a firefight after the bus blast.
"I was on my way to take my 1-1/2-month-old baby to the doctor. I heard a loud noise and I thought it was a bomb, so I went under the seat of the bus with my baby and we heard firing for about five minutes," 27-year-old housewife T.M Lalani told Reuters from Buttala hospital.
"Everybody was screaming and I saw people on the ground in a bloodbath," she added. "My leg got injured from pieces of glass. Luckily my baby has not got any injuries."
Sri Lanka’s Ministry of Defence said a large number of schoolchildren were on the bus at the time of the blast.
The Defence Ministry posted photographs of blood-soaked corpses of some victims on its Web site. Local television broadcast footage of the bus, showing bloodstains on the floor and personal belongings strewn inside and out.
The blast came amid reports the Sri Lankan military leadership was trying to convince the government to shut down schools in the South for extended periods, ahead of major offensives, including bombardments likely to cause heavy civilian casualties, into the Vanni.
Sri Lanka's bourse fell 2.1 percent on the news to six-month lows, though traders said investors had been expecting violence.
"We expect the market to come further down after today's end of the ceasefire agreement as more incidents are expected," said Harsha Fernando, CEO at SC Securities in Colombo.
The second blast targeted an army armoured personnel carrier 20 km south of the first attack, wounding three soldiers, the military said.
Men in uniform had been seen in the area for days preceding the attacks the Sunday Times reported. On January 15 a villager saw three people in uniform crossing the road. He thought they were Sri Lankan military personnel, and reported the sighting to Buttala Police, who questioned the villager and searched for the men with no success.
On the morning of the blasts a group of men, assumed to be military personnel as they were in uniform, had waved civilians away from their position. “One of the men in Army uniform signalled with his hand not to come closer and to go away. They gave the impression that they were on some ambush,” the Sunday Times reported.
After the blast which targeted the bus, the men had opened fire on the bus passengers.
“On Wednesday afternoon Army commandos entered the jungles … to conduct a full search. Hours later, the search operation was to trigger off reports that they had exchanged fire with the fleeing guerrillas. There was no such incident,” reported the Sunday Times.
“One of the commandos had stepped on a trap gun accidentally. He was injured and rushed to hospital. The guerrillas had fled and the search in that area was called off.”
The next day, Thursday ten persons who accompanied home guards on a cordon and search operation into the jungle area of Moneragala district were gunned down by armed men in two separate incidents.
In the second incident, three people, including a home guard, were wounded in Thanamalwila in the Uva Province. The victims were youths who joined the homeguards in search of an armed group, as part of a Sri Lankan government initiative to arm civilians and form a Civil Armed Force in Uva.
A week earlier, four charred dead bodies were located by Sri Lanka Army (SLA) in Ranminikanda jungle, bordering Kataragama in Buttala police division of Moneragala district.
