Aid Workers killed in Sri Lanka UPDATES

COLOMBO (AFP) — Sri Lanka's top rights panel said Thursday it has concluded investigations into the murder of 17 local employees of a French charity and six other high profile cases from the island's civil war.

The head of the probe, however, refused to say who had been found responsible for the 2006 massacre of the aid workers, which international monitors and rights groups have blamed on Sri Lankan government forces.

Amnesty International repeated calls for the findings to be made public.

"Families of the victims and survivors need answers," said Yolanda Foster, the group's Sri Lanka expert.

"These people still have not received any justice from the Sri Lankan government... It proves a real need for an international, independent mechanism to investigate the allegations of war crimes and grave human rights violations committed by both sides."

Seventeen aid workers who were murdered in eastern Sri Lanka this month were killed by government security forces, international peace monitors said yesterday.

The allegation, rejected as "baseless" by Colombo, will further strain already difficult relations between the Swedish-led ceasefire monitors and the island's government.

Seventeen employees of the French non-government organisation, Action Contre la Faim, were found dead after fighting in the town of Muttur, where they were engaged in tsunami relief.

Fifteen were found lying face down in their office with bullet wounds to the head. Two who were found in their car nearby, appeared to have been fleeing when they were killed.

All were wearing T-shirts which clearly identified them as humanitarian workers. "We're now demanding an independent investigation in Sri Lanka into how this could happen, execution-style, to humanitarian, unarmed workers," said Mr Egeland.

Gunmen claiming to be police have abducted and shot dead two Red Cross employees in Sri Lanka barely a week after the country pledged greater security for aid workers, the charity told AFP.

The Geneva-based charity said the bullet-riddled bodies of S Shanmungaligam and K Chandramohan were discovered in the central town of Ratnapura, hours after they were abducted from the main railway station in Colombo.

"The two were part of a group of six aid workers brought from Batticaloa (in the island's east) for a training program related to tsunami relief work last week," Sri Lanka Red Cross director-general Neville Nanayakkara told AFP.

The chaotic scenes were sparked after rumours spread that the agency had ordered 35,000 body bags in anticipation of civilian deaths in the island's conflict.

The speculation - which was denied by the Red Cross - sparked a demonstration in the capital in which a mob of about 200 people pro-government threw stones at the agency's office.

A stone-throwing mob attacked the offices of the Red Cross in Sri Lanka's capital on Friday as the government accused the agency of inciting panic over civilian deaths from fighting with Tamil Tiger rebels.

Government spokesman Keheliya Rambukwella said the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) had placed an order for 35,000 body bags to be used in the northeast where Tiger rebels have been cornered by the military.

"There is no need for 35,000 body bags or for that matter 3,500," Rambukwella told reporters shortly after the attack on the ICRC main office in a high security area of Colombo.

The international Red Cross committee says one of its aid workers has been killed in the Sri Lanka civil war. The International Committee of the Red Cross says Sinnathurai Kugathasan was hit by a shell Wednesday morning while getting water for his family in a coastal area held by Tamil rebels in northern of Sri Lanka.

The ICRC says Kugathasan leaves behind a wife and three children. The water technician had been working with the agency since 2002.