COLOMBO: At least 28 Sri Lankan troops are listed as killed or missing in recent battles with Tamil rebels in the northeast, the military said yesterday as a Japanese envoy attempted to save a tattered truce.
Military spokesman Prasad Samarasinghe said 28 government troops were dead or missing in action and 52 wounded during heavy fighting in the northern district of Vavuniya that began at the weekend.
He said 15 dead soldiers had been recovered and claimed the army killed 61 rebels. The guerrillas had claimed to have killed 30 soldiers.
There is no independent verification of the figures and both are known to inflate the losses on the other side while playing down their own casualties.
A bomb exploded under a passenger train in Sri Lanka’s embattled east yesterday, wounding at least four people, military officials said.
A mine buried along the track went off as the train was at Navaladi in the coastal district of Batticaloa, a military official in the area said by telephone.
“The engine and another compartment derailed after the explosion,” the official said.
Sri Lanka’s tsunami-ravaged eastern coast has been hit by months of fighting following the launch of a major government effort to oust Tamil Tiger rebels from the area and confine them to the north of the island.
The latest attack also came as residents in Batticaloa, 300km (187 miles) east of here, prepared for the funerals of two ethnic Tamil Red Cross workers who were abducted and murdered last week.
The funerals are scheduled today, to coincide with a scheduled visit to the region by Japan’s special peace envoy to Sri Lanka, Yasushi Akashi.
The Japanese envoy arrived in Colombo on Tuesday on a four-day visit aimed at reviving the island’s tattered peace process.
Meanwhile, Sri Lanka's President Mahinda Rajapakse held talks in Colombo yesterday with a top Japanese envoy on the future of the island's peace process following bloody recent clashes, officials said.
Rajapakse held closed-door talks with Japan's Yasushi Akashi at the president's tightly-guarded Temple Trees residence and the peace envoy later had discussions with the main opposition, officials said.
"The meeting with the president was a brief one," an official at the president's office said. He declined to give details of the discussion.
The Japanese diplomat arrived Tuesday, shortly after heavy weekend fighting between government troops and the Tamil Tiger rebels in the island's north left scores dead on both sides.
Akashi, who is on a four-day visit, is due to travel to the tropical island's embattled east on Thursday, but his official programme does not include a visit to the rebel-held north of the island, Sri Lankan officials said.
The 76-year-old envoy would "discuss with the government and the parties concerned the current situation of the peace process and its future," the Japanese embassy said.
Japan is the single largest donor to Sri Lanka - providing nearly two-thirds of all international aid to the island - but has so far resisted moves to squarely connect financial help to good governance and human rights.
Tokyo said last month that it had no plans to slash aid and follow the lead of Germany and Sri Lanka's former colonial ruler Britain, which have frozen debt relief due to rights concerns.
A Norwegian-brokered 2002 truce in Sri Lanka began unravelling from December 2005. Since then more than 5,000 people have been killed in fighting across the north and tsunami-ravaged east.
The rebels say they are fighting for an independent homeland for Sri Lanka's minority Tamils. The 35-year-old conflict has left at least 60,000 people dead. – AFP
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