Thwarted in their attacks on the government and military the LTTE are going for the softest targets of all, the impoverished working people of Sri Lanka, says writer Euan Ferguson in the Observer Magazine published with the influential UK weekly The Observer, in its issue last Sunday (June 29).

The LTTE, essentially pinned down in two territories, have taken to bombs, on trains and on buses”…. “Desperate tactics have been adopted by the Tigers, but there are increasing signs that by targeting innocent civilians they are fast losing whatever sympathies they once had within the majority Sinhalese population”, the article states.

It adds that there has for long been fundraising in the UK for the LTTE; with the Sri Lankan government estimating that £70m is raised annually in Britain, despite the LTTE being a proscribed organization there.

Here are relevant excerpts about the LTTE’s bus bombs and suicide killings from the Observer Magazine article titled “Lost in Paradise”:

“Here are not only the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) but their offshoot, the Black Tigers, the suicide squads. According to Jane's Information Group, between 1980 and 2000 the Tigers had carried out a total of 168 suicide attacks on civilians and military targets, easily exceeding those in the same period by Hezbollah and Hamas combined. And, now, today, thwarted in their attacks on the government and military, they're going for the softest targets of all, the impoverished working people of Sri Lanka. The gloves came off again at the start of 2008, with the government vowing to break the Tigers within a year”

“For all those decades of suicide practice, you'd think they might be getting the hang of it by now. But in Colombo's Fort Railway Station, a few weeks before my visit, it all went wrong again. A female suicide bomber, coming off a train from the south, was spotted acting oddly by police - too many clothes for the cloying heat - and fled from the turnstile back into the station. By platform three she sat down and exploded. She took 11 others with her…..The 11 dead included half a high school baseball team, and 92 were injured.”

Bus bombs

“Indrani Fernando, saw a suspicious bag left under a seat near the back.’When no one claimed it I told the crew and shouted at people to get off,' she says. The bus halted in the middle of a junction and everyone filed off and began walking away, rather quickly, and the police were called. Twenty seconds after the driver and conductor had climbed off, the bomb exploded: 10 passers-by were injured, among them children. Indrani later took a congratulatory call from the president, Mahinda Rajapaksa, thanking her for her vigilance. I go to see the bus, towed two miles away. The carcass is eviscerated, skeletal: no one would have survived.

Just before I arrived in Sri Lanka, another bus had been blown up a couple of kilometres outside Dambulla, an ancient holy rest-stop on the journey to the east. The 18 killed were almost all pilgrims, and included children. In the remote southern town of Buttala the rebels had recently failed to kill most of the passengers on a bus with a simple bomb; so they gunned down 32 of them as they fled, in flames.

Desperate tactics have been adopted by the Tigers, but there are increasing signs that by targeting innocent civilians they are fast losing whatever sympathies they once had within the majority Sinhalese population.

Funds from UK

An estimated 150,000 Tamils live in Britain, and there has long been fundraising here for the LTTE; the Sri Lankan government estimates £70m is raised annually in Britain, despite the Tigers being a proscribed organisation.

And the rebels, essentially pinned down in two territories, have taken to bombs, on trains and on buses.

The night before I fly out I wander down to the beach at Colombo. Within a couple of weeks, it turns out, this unconscionable little war will have erupted ever faster. A suicide bomber exploded successfully at the start of a marathon just outside Colombo, killing 13 (including a government minister). Then a parcel was left on the overhead rack of a bus leaving the depot at Piliyandala, just south of the capital: the fireball killed 24 and injured scores.