Six suspected Tamil Tigers were killed and eight Sri Lankan sailors were missing after rebels blew themselves up Saturday and sank a navy gunboat that had approached their trawler, the military said. A search was under way for the eight sailors missing in the incident off the coast of Mannar in the northwest of the island, a defence official here said, adding that 11 sailors had been rescued by local fishermen. “The navy suspected that the trawler was involved in gun running and got near it to carry out a search,” a defence official told AFP. “As the FAC (Fast Attack Craft) got near, the six people aboard the trawler blew themselves up.”In January, suspected Tamil Tiger rebels blew up a similar gunboat, killing 15 sailors, in a suicide attack outside the northeastern port of Trincomalee. The rebel Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) deployed a woman cadre to ram an explosives-laden vessel into an Israeli-built gunboat, the navy said at the time.
The navy this week detained a fishing trawler operated by suspected Tamil rebels off the islandÂ’s troubled northern waters while troops and guerrillas exchanged fire in the Jaffna peninsula. The crew of the trawler are still being held by security forces after they were arrested while operating in a restricted zone off the islandÂ’s north. Sri Lanka has repeatedly accused the Tigers of using the cover of fishermen to launch attacks against the navy.