January 18, 2006	Wednesday	Zilhaj 17, 1426

COLOMBO, Jan 17: Suspected Tamil Tigers launched several attacks on Sri Lankan troops on Tuesday while Nordic truce monitors said they were suspending operations in the east because of security fears.

The army said one soldier had been killed and thirteen military personnel wounded in two claymore mine attacks in the minority Tamil-dominated north and east, while two civilians died in the crossfire.

Two more civilians, including a known rebel sympathizer, were shot dead in another incident.

Over 100 people, half from the military, have been killed in a flare-up of fighting in Sri Lanka since early December, straining a 2002 ceasefire between the Tigers and the government almost to breaking point and hammering the stock market.

The benchmark Colombo stock index fell 1.43 per cent on Tuesday, continuing a slide since early last month.

The latest attacks came as Nordic envoys visited the Tiger headquarters ahead of a visit by peace broker Erik Solheim next week, seen as perhaps the last hope of averting a return to a two-decade-old civil war that has killed over 64,000.

The two sides have been unable to agree even a venue for talks, and while the Tigers deny involvement in recent attacks they accuse the army of a rising tide of rights abuses they say could spark conflict in the island once again.

“Accommodation can only come through dialogue, that’s been the lesson of the Irish peace process,” said Martin McGuinness, chief negotiator for Irish Republican Army political ally Sinn Fein. “There can be no military solution to these types of political problems.”

TOO MUCH VIOLENCE: President Mahinda Rajapakse has already ruled out Tiger demands for a Tamil homeland encompassing the de facto state they control as well as nearby government-controlled Tamil areas, but the rebels are seen as unwilling to compromise.

In the northeastern port of Trincomalee, where a claymore attack on a navy bus wounded 12 sailors earlier in the day, the Nordic truce monitors said the security situation had become so bad they had suspended operations in the town — something they have done before in the north, but only rarely.—Reuters