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Dozens killed in Sri Lanka attack

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COLOMBO, Sri Lanka (AP) -- At least 50 civilians displaced by ongoing battles between Tamil Tiger rebels and Sri Lankan security forces are feared to have been killed in artillery and rocket attacks on a school, civilian sources told CNN.

The sources said they fear the count could rise, but details of the incident on Wednesday in Vaharai, north of the eastern seaboard town of Batticaloa were sketchy.

The area is off-limits to outsiders, including international non-governmental organizations. The sources said the incident occurred Wednesday morning, when artillery and rockets rained down on the school.

Military spokesman Brigadier Prasad Samarasinghe said rebels had directed artillery and mortar fire during the past few days on security forces in the area. "Today it intensified and five soldiers were injured," he said.

Samarasinghe said 563 civilians from the rebel-controlled fishing village of Vakarai had left their homes and crossed into areas controlled by security forces. Some 30,000 to 35,000 civilians were being kept as human shields by the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE), better known as Tamil Tiger rebels, he added.

According to the pro-LTTE Web site Tamilnet, which reports on rebel battlefield accounts, artillery and rockets fell on the school as Sri Lanka Air Force aircraft were conducting reconnaissance flights over the area.

It said approximately 40 bodies were recovered.

The Web site added that more than 100 other civilians were wounded and without medical facilities, since the only area hospital had also been targeted and its patients had fled. There was no immediate government response to the claims.

Communication links to Vaharai remain cut, civilian sources in towns nearby said.

Two days of peace talks late last month between the government and the Tamil Tiger rebels in Geneva deadlocked over the proposed re-opening of the A-9 main highway, which links mainland Sri Lanka through rebel-held Wanni to the government-controlled northern Jaffna peninsula.

The highway has been closed since August 11, when rebels attacked Muhamalai, which separates Wanni from the Jaffna peninsula.

The closure has led to shortages of food, fuel, medicine and other supplies to the approximately 600,000 civilians in the Wanni and the peninsula.

President Mahinda Rajapaksa appealed to United Nations Secretary General Kofi Annan for help, urging UN staff supervise the transport of food supplies from the capital city of Colombo to Jaffna.

The rebels have refused to provide security guarantees for supply ships and are insisting that the A-9 route be reopened.

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