Sri Lanka arrests 10 for attack on port

Sri Lankan police in the southern port city of Galle has arrested at least 10 people suspected of being involved in Wednesday's Tamil rebel attack on the city.

The city's Police Superintendent Keerthi De Silva said Friday that all the 10 people are from the minority Tamil community.

The Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) rebels on Wednesday carried out a suicide attack mission in the Galle naval harbor.

A sailor and a civilian were killed while 24 others were injured in the attack, the first major attack carried out by the LTTE in the Southern Province in over two decades' history of the separatist armed conflict.

The LTTE's sea wing members in five boats had breached the security cordon of the Galle harbor, but the timely intervention by the Navy thwarted the rebel's effort.

De Silva said that eight bodies of the rebels had been found and the security authorities had conducted a thorough search operation in all the three southern districts of Galle, Matara and Hambantota in order to flush out the rebel cadres.

Wednesday's attack was the second this week directed by the rebels against the Navy. On Monday, 133 sailors were killed in a suicide attack in the North Central Province area of Habarana.

The attacks have come less than a fortnight before a scheduled direct talks to held in Switzerland on Oct. 28 and 29.

The LTTE told the visiting Norwegian special peace envoy Jon Hanssen-Bauer on Thursday that they would attend the talks after the prospects for talks were thrown into doubt by this week's violence.

Source: Xinhua