A suicide bomb that killed eight people and seriously injured the chief of the Sri Lankan Army on Tuesday has prompted retaliatory airstrikes on Tamil Tiger targets. Reports are unreliable, but the attacks appear to have killed at least 15 people and driven about 3,000 from their homes. Whatever the efforts of international negotiators to patch up the theoretical four-year ceasefire, it is clear that Sri Lanka is again in chaos.

Over the past three weeks violence has steadily grown in the north and east of the island, with bomb attacks on government troops and navy ships and mortars being fired into government-held areas. The Tamil Tigers have denied responsibility, but it is clear that they are trying to provoke the new hardline Government of President Rajapakse into retaliation.

The prospects for peace do indeed look bleak. The President ruled out autonomy for the Tamils during his election campaign last year and, in response to growing unrest among Sinhalese nationalists, promised to review the peace process brokered by the Norwegians. His victory last November was secured largely by massive abstentions in Tamil areas, where the Tigers appeared determined to sabotage the talks set to continue under Mr Rajapakse’s more flexible opponent. Both sides have since been seeking excuses to resume military operations. The Tigers pulled out of a second round of talks in Geneva this month on the pretext that they were not given safe passage from the areas they control. The Government has held up distribution of tsunami aid to Tiger-controlled areas, and has said that the Norwegians would no longer have a role as peace brokers.

Violence has cost Sri Lanka dear. About 64,000 people have been killed and a million displaced. Investors have been scared away, development has been stunted, tourism hurt; terrorism has got a grip in the island and among Tamil communities overseas. With evidence of widespread intimidation of Tamils abroad, many countries, including Britain, have proscribed the Tigers. After India’s ill-fated attempt at peacekeeping and the assassination in 1991 of Rajiv Gandhi, there is concern at the possible spread of the conflict into India — though, so far, little evidence of this or of support from Indian Tamils for the rebels. A return to war would be a disastrous setback. Both the Government and rebels must be made to see the cost of such folly.