Sri Lanka’s Tamil Tigers accused government forces of killing 45 civilians who were sheltering in a school today in the bloodiest incident since peace talks collapsed last month.

Seevaratnam Puleedevan, who heads the rebels’ Peace Secretariat, said that Sri Lankan troops had deliberately shelled the school and that the dead included refugees and at least five children.

"The mindless and cruel attack on a helpless refugee population which has already been subjected to blockades of all sorts of essential items is difficult to understand," the Secretariat said on its website www.ltteps.org.

"Is it possible that the Sri Lankan military’s intention was to teach the Tamils the lesson that they, the military, can kill refugees in such numbers, and no one can stop them?"

The government denied any knowledge of civilian casualties, and accused the Tigers of using human shields during a heavy mortar and artillery exchange in the eastern district of Batticaloa.

Brigadier Prasad Samarasinghe, a military spokesman, said the army had been responding to shelling from Tiger positions, which had killed five soldiers yesterday morning.

"They had to retaliate, but they did not target civilians," he told The Times, adding that the school was 200-300 metres from a Tiger camp.

It was impossible to verify the Tigers’ claim independently, but if confirmed, it would be one of the worst single losses of Tamil civilians’ lives since a ceasefire was signed in 2002.

In August, 61 Tamil girls were killed in an air raid on the rebel stronghold Mullaitivu.
The government said it hit a rebel base, but the Tigers said the victims were schoolgirls learning first aid.

The final death toll from today’s attack was unclear, but some doctors at local hospitals put it as high as 65.

It was the bloodiest incident in a week of violence that followed the failure of peace talks in Geneva on October 28-29.

The aim of the talks had been to get the two sides to abide by the 2002 ceasefire, which has steadily unravelled over the course of this year, leaving more than 2,000 people dead.

But the talks were undermined by an escalation in the violence in the preceding fortnight, which saw the Tigers carry out their worst ever suicide bombing followed by an attack on the tourist hub of Galle.

The Tigers have been fighting since 1983 for a separate homeland for ethnic Tamils in northeastern Sri Lanka, to protect them from discrimination by the majority Sinhalese.

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