World: Bombed site Ã¢â‚¬Ëœnot military installationÃ¢â‚¬â„¢ - SLMM

Monday, 14 August 2006

International ceasefire monitors who visited the site of the Sri Lankan airstrike Monday which killed 61 school girls and wounded 129 said they couldn’t find “any evidence of military installations or weapons.” Head of the Sri Lanka Monitoring Mission (SLMM), Ulf Henricsson, said monitors who visited Chencholai Valaham after the airstrike said they found at least 10 bomb craters and an unexploded bomb. “It was not a military installation, we can see [that],” Mr. Henricsson told Sri Lanka’s MTV television.

Mr. Henricsson said his staff visited Chencholai Valaham at 11 a.m. Monday. They examined the site and spoke to eyewitnesses who described the raid by four jets.

He said his staff had not finished counting the dead, but said the official count of 61 killed seemed “fairly correct.”

“We couldn’t find any sign of military installations or weapons,” Mr. Henricsson said. “This was not a military installation, we can see.”

But the Sri Lankan government’s official spokesman, Minister Keheliya Rambukwella, insisted the bombed site was a Tamil Tiger training camp.

“We have complete proof,” he said.

“We will show it to the relevant authorities,” Minister Rambukwella said, without elaborating.

He said the accusations that innocent schoolgirls had been killed “was purely a propaganda exercise [by the LTTE] to counter their defeats in the North and East.”

He repeated that the government would show “print proof” to “any person or organisation” But he did not elaborate what the proof was.

Meanwhile some media in Colombo began reporting that schools would be closed indefinitely from 4 p.m. Monday onwards. The reports quoted government announcements, but no official statement has been distributed yet.

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Nitharsan.K said:

We already can see what is the truth behind this attack. Thankyou SLMM, for you said the truth to the world.

2006-08-14 19:14:32

tamilstofightback said:

we tamils need to handle this ourselves. You can't reason with barbarians!! Fight evil with evil to protect the Tamil race. None of the international comunity has condemmed this. they might eventually but it will be weak.

we should take a lesson from the Americans who dropped the atom bomb on Japan, as they believed they deserved it after all their massacres of Chinese civilians and sheer brutality during the war. The tamils need to find our shock weapon and use it against the Sinhalese people. They should get the message by our killing school children and innocent civilians they will not be spared either.

2006-08-14 22:18:05

Neil Armstrong said:

I agree that you can't reason with barbarians. Though I disagree with the American nuclear bombing of Japan, the Americans did not drop the nuclear bombs on Japan because they thought the Japanese deserved it. Instead, the Americans dropped those nuclear bombs on Japan to force the Japanese to surrender very quickly to the USA instead of surrendering to the USSR who were massing their troops on the Soviet East Coast for an imminent invasion of Japan just before the Americans dropped the nuclear bombs.

Nevertheless, the American massacre of so many Japanese innocents can never be justified & remains a shocking crime against humanity. The Tamils should never stoop to such barbarism.

I think that nothing would be gained by killing innocent Sinhala school children. Nevertheless I agree that Tamils should handle this themselves and act unilaterally to remove the Sri Lankan ability to murder innocent Tamils.

Revenge alone never achieves anything.

2006-08-15 01:58:58

VP said:

Survivor in the Pottuvil massacre alleges LTTE for the carnage of the Muslim civilians
Wed, 2006-09-20 06:12
Slaying of the 10 innocent Muslim Civilians is the work of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam, the separatist Tamil rebel outfit. One survivor in the carnage of Muslim civilians was admitted to the Intensive Care Unit of the Ampara Hospital. He was quoted saying that the killers were clad in shorts and were speaking in Tamil. He was very confident and firm when he said that "they were none other than LTTErs". "It was gruesome" said the survivor Kareem Nilam Mohideen of Radalla, who is being treated at the Intensive Care Unit of the Ampara hospital. He was very confident and firm when he said that "they were none other than LTTErs".

2006-09-20 07:32:24

lionel smith said:

I doubt it, it seems that the one survivor is coached, and threatened, and promised for award; howevver, let us wait for the result of the investication, if there is one; please let us seek for the truth, and whoever committed should be punished.

2006-10-23 20:15:04