The LTTE seem to be gearing themselves to restart their suicide bombing campaign again.
Suicide blast kills six Tamil Tigers, eight Sri Lankan sailors missing
Six suspected Tamil Tigers were killed and eight Sri Lankan sailors were missing after rebels blew themselves up and sank a navy gunboat that had approached their trawler. Six suspected Tamil Tigers were killed and eight Sri Lankan sailors were missing after rebels blew themselves up and sank a navy gunboat that had approached their trawler. A search was under way for the eight sailors missing in the incident off the coast of Mannar in the northwest of the island, a defence official here said, adding that 11 sailors had been rescued by local fishermen. “The navy suspected that the trawler was involved in gun running and got near it to carry out a search,” a defence official told AFP. “As the FAC (Fast Attack Craft) got near, the six people aboard the trawler blew themselves up.”
In January, suspected Tamil Tiger rebels blew up a similar gunboat, killing 15 sailors, in a suicide attack outside the northeastern port of Trincomalee. The rebel Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) deployed a woman cadre to ram an explosives-laden vessel into an Israeli-built gunboat, the navy said at the time. The navy this week detained a fishing trawler operated by suspected Tamil rebels off the island’s troubled northern waters while troops and guerrillas exchanged fire in the Jaffna peninsula. The crew of the trawler are still being held by security forces after they were arrested while operating in a restricted zone off the island’s north. Sri Lanka has repeatedly accused the Tigers of using the cover of fishermen to launch attacks against the navy. Tension has been rising in the troubled northeast, with the guerrillas accusing the military of building new bunkers in violation of their four-year-old ceasefire. The Tigers accused the navy of attacking villages in the northeast last Monday. The navy said they had fired only in self defence after being attacked by Tigers. There have been sporadic skirmishes despite agreement by both sides last month to scale down violence ahead of another round of talks at a venue in Switzerland next month on saving their troubled truce. More than 60,000 people have been killed in Sri Lanka’s drawn-out Tamil separatist conflict.