COLOMBO: As anti-LTTE groups clamoured for local and international banning of the LTTE, following Tuesday’s blast in Colombo by a Tamil Tiger suicide bomber, the country is preparing for what could be yet another bloody war.

The government military and air force, in its first action against the LTTE after the Army chief Sarath Fonseka was seriously injured and 10 others killed in the suicide blast, bombed a Tiger base in eastern Trincomalee. The military also bombed a cluster of boats of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) on Tuesday night, a police official in the area said on Wednesday.

Israeli-built Kfir jets and Ukranian MiG-27 aircraft carried out sorties on Wednesday after an overnight bombardment that involved multi-barrel rocket launchers, artillery and naval fire from gunboats, sources at the military headquarters in Colombo said.

The air strike carried out on Wednesday continued for about an hour, sources said  Meanwhile, a senior government minister said the government would lobby for a ban on the LTTE by the European Union following the latest LTTE suicide attack.   In last September, the EU had imposed a travel ban on the LTTE to EU countries following the assassination of Lakshman Kadirgamar in August. While President Mahinda Rajapakse on Tuesday declared in his address to the nation that the government was running out of patience against the recent string of killings carried out by the Tigers, the Norwegian Embassy in Colombo confirmed that the LTTE political wing leader S. P. Thamilchelvam had on Tuesday written to the Norwegian peace facilitator Jon Hanssen-Bauer demanding that the government disarm Tamil paramilitary groups.

The LTTE missive had accused the government of ‘inciting violence in the Tamil homeland’ and demanded that the LTTE members be allowed to use their own vessels for travel. “If the government is keen on the peace efforts, then, as facilitators of the peace efforts, we hope you will put pressure on the government of Sri Lanka, to accept the air travel procedures that were in place and alternatively accept the sea travel of our members in our Naval vessels,” the letter stated, a week after the rebels pulled out of peace talks on the grounds that their eastern commanders could not travel to the north for a meeting, due to the government’s lack of co-operation.

The Norwegian Embassy spokesperson Eric Nurnverg when contacted did not comment on the LTTE letter but said that the ceasefire had received its ‘worst possible’ blow after Tuesday’s surge of violence. The Norwegian spokesperson also avoided comment on the military artillery attacks in the east of the country, but said Norway’s top priority was to prevent further escalation of violence. “The situation could yet be redeemed,” Nunverg said while the Nordic truce monitors were not as optimistic.

“We are monitors of a ceasefire not a war. What we now have could hardly be described as a ceasefire,” Helen Olafsdottir, spokesperson for the Sri Lanka Monitoring Mission (SLMM) said adding that the SLMM was ‘sticking to its guns’ despite the bleak situation. “We will not just abandon and leave. It is a bad state of affairs but we will try as much as possible to put things right,” Olafsdottir said.  

The truce monitors and the government have had recent disagreements over the issue of Tamil paramilitary groups who the LTTE claims are attacking them. The SLMM has repeatedly refuted government claims that there were no such groups.

Meanwhile, LTTE sources say the rebels have intensified their recruitment campaign asking youth to join the LTTE to unleash the ‘final war’ against the government. In his emotionally charged address to the nation on state-television on Tuesday night, President Mahinda Rajapakse asked the LTTE ‘not to misread commitment for peace as a weakness, which analysts say could be a sign that the government too is finally thinking on pro-war lines.

“It is clear that the LTTE wants nothing but war. All this government wanted was peace. Now we are challenged with the worst ever kind of terrorism that the LTTE is insisting on,” a source at the presidential secretariat said.