Tamil Rebels Kill 13 Navy Troops in Sri Lanka

Convoy Attack is Worst Since 2002 Cease-Fire

NEW DELHI, Dec. 23 -- Ethnic Tamil rebels attacked a military convoy in northern Sri Lanka Friday, killing 13 navy troops in the worst such incident since a 2002 cease-fire, the Sri Lankan military announced. The attack was the latest in an escalating series of clashes that have raised fears of return to civil war.

Military officials in Colombo, the Sri Lankan capital, said the sailors were traveling by bus and truck in the northern district of Mannar when rebels from Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam, or LTTE, attacked the convoy with claymore fragmentation grenades, assault rifles and rocket-propelled grenades.

"They laid a deliberate ambush," an army spokesman told Reuters. "It was very well carried out."

An LTTE spokesman, Daya Master, told the Associated Press from the rebel stronghold of Kilinochchi that the group had "no connection whatsoever" to the attack on the government forces. But analysts were skeptical of the group's claims, noting that the LTTE has often denied responsibility for its actions in the past.

Friday's attack came just a day after three Sri Lankan sailors died in a sea battle between rebel and government naval vessels off the northern coast. Although the two sides signed a cease-fire in February 2002, the agreement has lately come under intense pressure, with about 30 soldiers killed in rebel attacks since the beginning of December, according to a Western diplomat in Colombo

"It appears that the LTTE has initiated what some might call limited military engagement," said Jayadeva Uyangoda, the head of the political science department at the University of Colombo, in a telephone interview from the capital.

"There's a great deal of pessimism in the country now because every day there's growing violence, and neither the government nor the international community seems to have a mechanism for managing this violence," he added. "The fear is that it might get out of hand and that the escalation of violence might lead to an outbreak of hostilities."

Earlier this year, things had seemed to be moving in a more hopeful direction, as bitterly divided ethnic factions briefly seemed to forget their differences in the aftermath of the Dec. 26, 2004, tsunami, which killed more than 35,000 people and devastated the country's fishing and tourism industries. But the mood soured when the Supreme Court blocked a proposed mechanism for sharing aid between the two sides on grounds that it violated national sovereignty by granting too much power to the rebels.

About 18 percent of Sri Lanka's 20 million people are Tamils, most of whom are Hindus. Many Tamils have long complained of discrimination at the hands of the predominantly Buddhist and ethnic Sinhalese majority. More than 60,000 Sri Lankans have died in two decades of fighting between the government and LTTE, which is seeking an independent state, Tamil Eelam, in the north and east.

Since last year, the rebel group has accused the government of backing a breakaway rebel faction that has assassinated a number of its members in the country's eastern province. Analysts speculate that the latest rebel attacks are aimed at forcing the new, hard-line government of Prime Minister Mahinda Rajapakse to curb the breakaway faction, if and when the two sides begin negotiations on strengthening the cease-fire.

But the danger, diplomats and analysts say, is that the rebels will push their campaign a step too far, plunging the country back into a war that neither side is capable of winning on the battlefield. Last month, rebel leader Velupillai Prabhakaran threatened the government with renewed violence unless it took a more accommodating view of ethnic Tamil grievances.