Fifteen aid workers found executed

FIFTEEN aid staff working on post-tsunami rebuilding have been found executed in an office in north-east Sri Lanka after heavy fighting.

The Consortium for Humanitarian Agencies (CHA) confirmed yesterday that one of the relief teams that reached the battered town of Mutur had found the corpses. "They found them in the office on the ground, lying face down - executed," Jeevan Thiagarajah, the head of the CHA, said.

He added that it was not clear who had killed them and there was no further information immediately available last night.

Mutur has seen days of fighting between the government and rebels from the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE), and thousands of people have fled.

The Tamil Tigers said on Saturday they had halted their offensive on Mutur, but analysts fear they might launch new offensives on other fronts in the north and east.

Yesterday, Sri Lankan artillery pounded Tamil Tiger territory in a heavy and prolonged barrage.

The shelling came after the rebels offered to give in on a key government demand - to re-open a sluice gate which provides water to farms on government-held territory - but warned that new attacks would spark "full-scale war".

Ulf Henricsson, the Swede who heads the unarmed Nordic-staffed ceasefire monitoring mission, was heading towards the sluice gate, near the north-eastern port of Trincomalee, when the artillery opened fire.

Tommy Lekenmyr, the chief of staff for the Sri Lanka Monitoring Mission, said: "[The government] have the information that the LTTE has made this offer.

"They said if you have any personnel in the area, make sure that they leave because we are starting an operation. It is quite obvious they are not interested in water. They are interested in something else.

"We will blame this on the government."

A government official said it was possible that troops had been on the verge of taking the sluice gate and that they viewed the Tiger offer as a gambit.

"From the very beginning, the LTTE has been inciting this," he said.

Earlier in the day, after meeting the Norwegian peace envoy Jon Hanssen-Bauer in the rebel stronghold of Kilinochchi, SP Thamilselvan, the leader of the Tigers' political wing, said they would unblock the sluice gate if fighting stopped and if the government increased development in rebel areas.

"Our leader has agreed to open the sluice on humanitarian grounds," he said. "The ceasefire is on at the moment, and if the military continues attacks and shellings and makes any more moves, we will consider it as a full-scale war."

He said he had given Mr Hanssen-Bauer three to four weeks to ensure the government complied with rebel demands to guarantee water supplies to rebel areas and lift "all economic obstacles in these areas".

A few hours later, witnesses saw and heard the heaviest military artillery and rocket barrage for days fired from military bases in Trincomalee towards rebel territory. Smoke rose from a whole section of the horizon and the ground shook.

The military said an operation was ongoing in the area of the sluice gate but would not give more details. The Tigers, who have fought for two decades for a separate Tamil homeland, said they had not yet retaliated but were angry. "This shows the duplicity of the Sri Lankan government," a spokesman said.