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Colombo: Sri Lanka's military launched airstrikes on Tamil rebel bases Wednesday after navy craft came under attack, and a pro-rebel Web site reported at least 12 people killed as the country appeared headed back into fullscale fighting. Military spokesman Brigadier Prasad Samarasinghe said Wednesday's strikes came after the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) fired on naval patrol craft off the eastern port of Trincomalee for a second day. The government launched attacks on Tiger territory on Tuesday after a suspected suicide bomb in the capital killed nine and wounded the army commander. The Tigers said on Wednesday that at least 12 people - including women and children - died in those raids.
The attacks were the first official military action since a 2002 ceasefire halted the two-decades-old civil war and raised fears that the Norwegian-brokered truce was on the brink of collapse. Swedish Major-General Ulf Henricsson, who heads the Sri Lanka Monitoring Mission, said if air strikes continued, peace talks would become difficult. "We still have a valid ceasefire agreement. No party has ended it, but of course it is not a ceasefire right now," he told Reuters. The latest spasm of violence began on Tuesday when a suspected ethnic Tamil suicide bomber targeted the government's top military commander. The suicide bomber also injured 26 other people after talking her way into military complex in the Sri Lankan capital, Colombo, saying she had an appointment at a clinic. She blew herself up in front of a car carrying the army commander, Lt. Gen. Sarath Fonseka, who was in stable condition at a Colombo hospital on Wednesday, said Hector Weerasinghe, a hospital director. Tensions have been worsening for the past two weeks along with violence that has killed more than 100 people, including 43 soldiers or police, just this month. Last week, the rebels backed out of peace talks that had been scheduled to start on Monday in Geneva, citing attacks on Tamil civilians and other disputes with the government. The rebels accuse the Sinhalese-dominated government of discriminating against minority Tamils and want a separate homeland on the island, which lies off India's southern tip.
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