09:24 AM EST June 14, 2003
The Associated Press
COLOMBO, Sri LankaA navy patrol halted a Tamil Tiger rebel ship carrying 12 people Saturday in a confrontation that ended with the rebel ship exploding and sinking off the country's northeast coast, military and rebel officials said.
Rebels said all 12 crew jumped from the ship before it exploded and were captured by the navy, but the navy denied their claims.
Meanwhile, snipers, believed to be Tamil Tiger rebels, killed a leading Tamil politician in the northern city of Jaffna on Saturday, military officials said.
Subathran, a leader of the Jaffna unit of the Eelam People's Revolutionary Liberation Front, was killed while doing his morning exercises on the rooftop of his home, said a military official on condition of anonymity.
His party is opposed to the Liberation Tigers of Tamileelam, which controls much of the Jaffna Peninsula. Subathran went by only one name.
The rebels and the government signed a cease-fire in February 2002 ending 19 years of fighting, and navy patrols in the area seek to prevent the rebels from smuggling in weapons.
The military and the rebels gave widely differing accounts of Saturday's sea confrontation.
A military official said a navy patrol craft spotted the rebel vessel being towed by smaller rebel boats to the coast. The navy ordered the ship to stop and then fired warning shots, a official said on condition of anonymity.
Another navy patrol craft joined in the operation. The rebels, seeing they were outnumbered, withdrew their smaller boats and the ship exploded moments later, the official said. Navy spokesman Capt. Jayantha Perera said the rebel crew could not have survived the explosion.
The military has said the rebels have previously destroyed their own ships to cover up weapons smuggling.
However, rebel spokesman Daya Master said the navy attacked and sank their boat more than 300 miles from the shore in international waters. He didn't say what it had been carrying. He said the 12 rebel crew members were captured by the navy.
Neither version of events could be confirmed independently.
The Norwegian-led team that monitors Sri Lanka's ceasefire was trying to establish what happened, but even the location of the confrontation was unsure. The military said the clash took place about 120 miles from shore, said Agnes Bragadottir, spokeswoman for the monitoring team.
The rebels in April suspended discussions aimed at securing a permanent end to the fighting, which killed about 65,000 people. The insurgents accused the government of not doing enough to rehabilitate the country's war-torn northeast and resettle thousands of Tamil refugees.
The rebels want greater political autonomy in the areas where most of Sri Lanka's 3.2 million Tamils live, charging discrimination by the majority Sinhalese, who number 14 million.
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