COLOMBO, Dec 13: Tourist arrivals to Sri Lanka jumped by a fifth in November from a year ago with the help of a cricket tournament and a large conference, but renewed violence on the island will weigh on full-year numbers, officials said.

Arrivals in the January-November period fell 16.8 percent and are set to drop by a fifth in the whole of 2007 due to resurging violence in the two-decade war between the state and separatist Tamil Tiger guerrillas, Sri Lanka Tourism Development Authority said on Thursday.

Forty people were killed in three bomb attacks, including asuicide attack, since Nov. 28, a day after Tamil Tiger leader Velupillai Prabhakaran said he had no hope of a political settlement to end the nearly 25-year civil war and said the guerrillas would fight on for an independent state.

Officials said arrivals spiked up in November for the first time since January when around 10,000 English cricket fans came to watch England-Sri Lanka test cricket matches, and the country hosted a Commonwealth assembly in mid-November.

Officials said last month that Colombo’s target of attracting 500,000 tourists this year may be in doubt. The island had originally targeted 600,000 arrivals but cut that goal after Tamil Tiger air strikes on the island’s only international airport sharply cut tourism traffic between March and June.Sri Lanka attracted 559,603 tourists in 2006.

According to central bank data, tourism earnings dropped by a fifth in the first half of this year to $217.9 million.—Reuters