| Tamilnet, via Bangla Daily Star, so the whole story might be apocryphal... |
Sri Lankan navy personnel opened fire and hurled grenades in a church packed with frightened Tamils, killing six men and women and injuring dozens, a church leader has complained to the Vatican. Bishop Rayappu Joseph has given a horrific account of the attack on the Lady of Victory church at Pesali in north-western Mannar district on Saturday. The explosion severed the head of a 75-year-old Tamil Catholic woman. Other navy personnel fired through keyholes indiscriminately, killing two more Catholics and Hindus each and a Muslim.The incident took place when thousands of Tamils huddled in the church, Sri Lanka's biggest, following fighting between the Sri Lankan navy and fighters of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE). The outraged bishop said the church had been desecrated "by unjust aggressors, the navy", TamilNet website reported. "Today I buried the six civilians murdered by the navy at Pesalai," the bishop wrote on Sunday. The navy personnel fired through holes in the main doors, wounding many people, and then forced open a window and tossed two grenades. This, the bishop said, resulted "in one lady's head being blown off in the church and several others sustaining injuries, some serious". He said the Sri Lankan military refused permission for him to go to Pesalai to attend to the casualties. He said "military sources had tried to spread false news stating that there had been an attack by LTTE on land at Pesalai on the police and the navy had to open fire."
According to Bishop Joseph, much later, when the local navy commander met some 7,000 Tamils in the area, they begged to be allowed to flee to India by boats or move to areas controlled by the LTTE. In his lengthy letter to the Holy See, the bishop also described the cold-blooded execution of five fishermen "unfortunate enough to be outside working on their boats" when the fighting took place in the Mannar sea. TamilNet said the fishermen were pleading for their lives, showing the identity cards provided to them by the navy, when they were gunned down, in their heads and through the mouth.