A sharp upsurge this week in the violence that has plagued the Northeast for months has created widespread anxiety and confusion amongst the region’s residents who fear a breakdown in the almost four year old ceasefire.



Numerous attacks on the Liberation Tigers, Sri Lankan security forces, and civilians have resulted in several deaths and injuries amid tensions between Tamil civilians and security forces.



International ceasefire monitors warned again this week the February 2002 ceasefire is being undermined and called on the Sri Lankan government and the LTTE to work together to end the cycle of violence.



The Sri Lanka Monitoring Mission (SLMM) said the number of politically-related killings in Sri Lanka this year is nearing 200.



‘The killings have gradually undermined the ceasefire and resulted in mistrust and a bad atmosphere between the parties,’ the SLMM said in a statement issued after the assassination in Colombo of a senior military intelligence officer.



Whilst there have, as has become commonplace, several attacks on the LTTE ad the security forces in the restive Batticaloa district, violence has escalated in the Jaffna peninsula too. Apart from clashes between local residents and Sri Lankan troops which left one protestor dead, there have been a number of attacks on security forces in the northern peninsula.



Three Sri Lanka Army (SLA) soldiers and two policemen were injured in 3 different grenade attacks in Jaffna Wednesday night.



Two policemen were wounded when assailants lobbed a grenade into their post in Navanthurai, a coastal suburb of the Jaffna town at 9pm. Two soldiers were wounded in Malusanthi junction near Nelliyadi in Vadamaradchi when a grenade was thrown at their sentry point.



Two men on a motorbike on Valvetithurai-Atchuveli Road lobbed a grenade into an army post in Atchuveli town, wounding a soldier.



Troops blocked civilian movement in Gurunagar, another coastal suburb of Jaffna, after a grenade was lobbed at a checkpoint but did not explode.



In the last of four grenade attacks in Jaffna last weekend, a policeman was killed and three were injured Monday when unidentified men lobbed a grenade into a police truck on the Palaly Road, north of Jaffna town. Travelers at the scene were beaten up by furious policemen and soldiers following the incident.



A grenade lobbed into a police post located in front of the Kondavil post officeSunday night seriously wounded two policemen and a SLA soldier.



Earlier, two men on a motorbike had followed a SLA truck in Thenmaradchy and hurled a hand grenade into the vehicle near Mirusuvil junction, wounding at least two soldiers. Their colleagues opened indiscriminate fire after the incident, but no one was injured, press reports said.



On Saturday two men on a motorbike lobbed a grenade into the bunker of a SLA checkpoint in Jaffna town, but no casualties were reported.



Tension surged in Jaffna last week after troops fired on residents of Puthur protesting Friday against an attempted rape by Sri Lanka Army (SLA) soldiers. A 20-year old youth was killed and several other demonstrators wounded, as troops reportedly fired 250 rounds. There have been demonstrations outside the Jaffna offices of international truce monitors as well as Army camps in the area.



A three-wheel driver was shot in Trincomalee town last Thursday in the only recorded incidence of violence in that town last week.



But in Batticaloa Army-backed paramilitaries staged several raids into Tamil Tiger-controlled areas, in one case using local residents as human shields as they withdrew into Army-controlled areas.



A LTTE cadre was killed when the Tigers launched a counter attack on a raiding paramilitary party which penetrated into their controlled areas in Vaharai on Sunday.



The LTTE said paramilitary cadres and Sri Lankan military intelligence operatives retreated with their dead and wounded behind a human shield of local residents.



The paramilitaries in the area are operating out of the SLA’s Singapura and Mankerny bases, the LTTE said, adding another Tiger cadre had been killed a week earlier in another incursion.



A series of grenade attacks on Sri Lankan troops and police have also claimed lives and caused injuries. Two SLA soldiers were seriously wounded when men riding in a motorbike lobbed a grenade into a sentry point 5 km east of Batticaloa town Sunday night.



A little later, a 32-years-old mother and her 16-years-old daughter were injured when two motorbike-riding men lobbed a grenade into their house, located behind a Special Task Force (STF) camp 6 km south of Batticaloa. The motive for the attack is not clear.



In Batticaloa town, two civilians were wounded when two motorbike-riding men lobbed a grenade in front of a shop near Batticaloa Railway station.



Also on Sunday, three refugee children were injured in Batticaloa when SLA soldiers returned fire at gunmen who had fired at their sentry point. One soldier was wounded in the attack.



Two gunmen riding a motorbike shot a rice mill worker on his way to work in Akkaraipattu last Saturday. The 38-year-old Sinhalese father of one who was married to a Tamil woman was residing at Kannakipuram Refugee Camp.



In Batticaloa town itself, the Sri Lanka Army and paramilitary forces conducted a cordon and search operation herding over a thousand young men and women into common grounds and searching them.



Masked paramilitary cadres wearing military uniforms assisted over 500 SLA personnel to round up the youth and parade them to common grounds for identification in an operation that took 10 hours, reported TamilNet.



Twenty Tamil youths, identified by the masked-men were detained by the SLA for further questioning.



The raid follows a similar operation in Pottuvil in the Amparai district, where masked motorbike-unit-soldiers of the SLA cordoned off and searched the town and its suburbs, holding residents at gunpoint for 4 hours Sunday evening.



In another search operation in northern suburbs of Batticaloa town, SLA troops arrested four Tamil youths and seized two assault rifles, a pistol and grenades.



Civilian organisations in the Northeast have complained that the return to arbitrary round-ups by the Sri Lankan armed forces on a large scale involving large number of personnel and masked paramilitary cadres, harking back to pre-ceasefire days, are causing panic among the population.



ON a related theme, an LTTE delegation from Trincomalee met with international ceasefire monitors Monday to outline the increasing restrictions being placed on civilians by the SLA in the eastern district.



Aside from curtailing the movement of civilians through a checkpoint and subjecting all travelers to body checks, the SLA has also begun to restrict the transporting of fuels such as kerosene and diesel, the LTTE officials told the Sri Lanka Monitoring Mission (SLMM)



The LTTE delegation also said it had evidence to prove that SLA soldiers are attacking Tiger cadres with the assistance of paramilitary Tamil groups in the LTTE held Vaharai division in Batticaloa district.



The increasing securitisation is not restricted to the Northeast, with reports that young Tamil men living in rented apartments in Colombo are being threatened by men in military uniforms and warned to leave Colombo immediately and return to their own towns.



Compiled from TamilNet and local reports.