Batticaloa, Apr 01: Combat-ready soldiers patrolled the streets of this largely Tamil town, one day after unidentified gunmen killed a Tamil candidate in this week`s parliamentary elections. Soldiers fanned out across this eastern town, where Radian Sathiyamoorthy of the Tamil National Alliance, a candidate allied with a renegade guerrilla leader, was fatally shot on Tuesday along with a relative. Just days ahead of the Friday vote, the Center for Monitoring Election Violence, a group overseeing the polling, said it was worried about the recent spike in political violence in Tamil-dominated areas. "We are extremely disturbed by reports that Tamil National Alliance supported by the LTTE has made it impossible for other Tamil parties and groups to carry on with a campaign," the group said in a statement. Some LTTE supporters are running in Friday`s election as candidates for the rebel group`s proxy party, the Tamil National Alliance. The party`s leaders could become kingmakers if voting results, as expected, don`t conclusively favor either of the country`s two main political blocs. But the alliance has been roiled by a split in Tiger ranks in early March, when a powerful Tiger leader broke away from the main group with about 40% of its fighters.
Bureau Report