Tamil National Alliance MPs took part in a ceremony commencing the construction of a memorial shrine commemorating 21 school children that where killed in a Sri Lankan Air Force attack on a school in Jaffna 20 years ago.
TNA MPs including Mavai Senathirajah and M A Sumanthiran were present at the ceremony and took party in laying the foundation stone for the shrine on Tuesday.
The Nagar Koyil School was bombed on 21 September 1995 hours after the Sri Lankan government enforced censorship on press reports on the military conflict between government forces and the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE).
The Sri Lankan government, denying that the attack was on a school, instead alleged that it was a LTTE base.
The British Refugee Council, in a statement made after the bombings, said,
"Hours after the Sri Lanka government imposed military censorship on press reporting of its bitter and unpredictable war... on 21 September, aircraft bombed a Jaffna school yard crammed with 750 children on their lunch break, killing 34 and seriously injuring over 150 others."
Two surgeons from the international medical relief agency, Medicine Sans Frontiers, worked through the night in Jaffna hospitals treating severely injured children from the attack.
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