COLOMBO, July 5: As violence mounts in Sri Lanka with seven persons killed on Monday, the head of the Nordic truce monitoring mission said on Tuesday that his team will not pull out of the country.

Fears of the monitors totally suspending their work came after the LTTE, angered by the EU ban of the Tiger rebel outfit in May, decreed that ceasefire monitors from EU countries leave by September 1.

There is no question of a total phase out. But we are preparing for several alternatives such as strengthening the mission with members from non-EU countries, Major-General Ulf Henriccson, the Swedish head of the sixty-member Sri Lanka Monitoring Mission (SLMM), told Dawn.

Nearly forty of the SLMM monitors are from EU member states.