International concern mounted for Sri Lanka's tottering peace process as the air force bombarded Tamil Tiger rebels on Friday ahead of a mass funeral for 64 people blown up on a bus.
COLOMBO: International concern mounted for Sri Lanka's tottering peace process as the air force bombarded Tamil Tiger rebels on Friday ahead of a mass funeral for 64 people blown up on a bus.
At first light Friday, jets resumed retaliatory attacks against suspected Tiger positions, military officials said.
"The airforce carried out two bombing sorties over Kilinochchi and Mullaitivu," a military source here said referring to two northern areas held by the Tigers.
"The identified targets of the LTTE (Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam) are being taken this morning," he said.
There were no immediate reports of casualties or damage. Sri Lanka had hit back quickly on Thursday using supersonic jets, naval gunboats and artillery to pound rebel targets in the north and east, military spokesman Prasad Samarasinghe said.
The LTTE confirmed that the military had carried our aerial and artillery bombardments Thursday but gave no details of any casualties.
Meanwhile, government officials began handing over the bodies of Thursday's blast to their families.
A mass funeral was to take place in the north central district of Anuradhapura, 200 kilometres from the capital Colombo.
The authorities blamed the Tamil Tigers for the Claymore mine explosion that hit an overcrowded civilian bus in an ethnic Sinhalese area, killing 64 passengers, including 15 children, and wounding another 80.
The LTTE denied involvement and accused the government of trying to discredit them with the worst bombing against civilians in 10 years. The blast and retaliatory strikes fuelled fears the island's faltering peace process was doomed and that the nation was heading back to full-scale war.
The United States led international condemnation and urged the Tigers to "renounce terror and enter into direct negotiations with the Sri Lankan government."
Former colonial ruler Britain condemned the attack and urged all sides to refrain from further "senseless" violence.
"I urge strongly the LTTE to put aside its weapons and to be a responsible partner for peace," British Foreign Office minister Kim Howells said.
The island's main peace broker, Norway's International Development Minister Erik Solheim, described the attack as "horrific" and asked both sides to end the spiral of violence and stop killing civilians.
"The most important now is for everyone in Sri Lanka to put a stop to this violence, where one act of violence creates a response from others and then it goes from one case of violence to another, worse and worse," Solheim said.
India, Japan and Switzerland also condemned the carnage while nudging the parties to negotiate. President Mahinda Rajapakse brushed aside security concerns on Thursday and flew to Kebitigollewa in a military helicopter to visit survivors in hospital and comfort the relatives of the victims.
"I have already taken steps to keep the international community informed of this terrorist attack against civilians," Rajapakse said outside the rural hospital in the farming community. "I will not allow this to happen again."
A Finnish representative of the Nordic truce observer mission said the blast was retaliation by the Tigers for recent government attacks.
"It seems that the Tamil Tigers wanted to avenge these acts with a bigger attack," monitoring mission officer Jouni Suninen told Finnish news agency STT.
The LTTE said Friday that they killed a second government soldier this week who had infiltrated into an area held by them to plant mines. The military denied the report and said the Tigers had abducted two troopers. Norway last week failed to arrange a face-to-face meeting between Colombo and the LTTE in Oslo.
A spate of recent bomb attacks have targeted security forces as well as civilians, and been officially blamed on the guerrillas who in turn often accuse a breakway Tamil faction.
The spike in violence has left at least 760 people dead since December, according to official figures.
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