A senior military official yesterday said that the LTTE could not have targeted an army Brigade Commander’s official vehicle on Monday in Valaichchnai thinking they were attacking an ordinary military vehicle. "It was used by the Kakudah Brigade Commander for some time. That is a fact," the official said.
The vehicle came under pistol and hand grenade attack while it was proceeding towards Valaichchnai.
The left-hand side of the windscreen and the buffer of the vehicle had been damaged.
The Brigade Commander was not in the vehicle when it came under attack, he said.
Army headquarters said, "SLMM representatives visited the scene along with the Police and troops."
Reports further confirmed that two Eelam People’s Democratic Party (EPDP) supporters, who were engaged in distributing their party literature, had also been in the area when those unidentified men struck.
Both EPDP activists, Kannan and Seelan were in the area when the incident occurred but Kannan had just entered a saloon.
His fellow supporter, Seelan in the meantime was busy at his work beside a shop on the roadside in the company of three Policemen who were providing security to EPDP men at work.
The pistol men, believed to have operated seemingly from a roof-top or a raised platform, had fired towards the Army vehicle that was on the road at the same time.
In the melee, fear-stricken EPDP Seelan, seemingly aware what was going to happen, had taken to his heels and crept into a nearby hardware shop in search of protection, leaving behind the policemen.
The unidentified assailants then threw a hand grenade towards the fleeing EPDP supporter but it too missed the target and hit another civilian who rushed out from the shop to find what was happening.
The subsequent explosion of the hand grenade injured the civilian, Ahmed Lebbe (48) of Kattankudy after pistol men threw the hand grenade.
Policemen rushed the injured civilian to the Valaichchenai hospital for treatment but he was later transferred to the Batticaloa hospital since his condition grew worse.
The Sri Lanka Monitoring Mission was to be alerted about this violation of the cease-fire agreement.
The Kalkudah Police have commenced investigations.
