Execution-style victims in Sri Lanka mass graves: police
COLOMBO (AFP) — At least 16 bullet-riddled bodies of unidentified men were found in mass graves in north-central Sri Lanka Thursday, police said.
Witnesses said some of the victims had their hands tied together and had bullet holes in their heads.
The decomposed bodies were found by local residents in the district of Anuradhapura in the government-controlled part of the island.
"Investigations have now begun to establish the identity of the victims and the circumstances in which they were killed," police said.
Local residents alerted a magistrate to at least one body that was found in the area. When police visited the site they discovered another 15 bodies in two adjoining shallow graves.
"The bodies were dumped in shallow graves," a local resident who visited the scene said by telephone from Anuradhapura, located 206 kilometres (130 miles) north of the capital Colombo.
Police said the bodies were taken to a hospital for autopsies.
Similar mass graves have been previously found in Sri Lanka's embattled northern regions, where the government is fighting Tamil Tiger guerrillas who are fighting for independence from the island's ethnic Sinhalese majority.
Several people killed execution-style were also found in and around the capital last year, prompting the United Nations to demand it be allowed to set up a mission on the island to monitor human rights.
The Sri Lankan government rejected the UN demand.
Earlier this month, the Sri Lankan government pulled out of a 2002 truce with the Tamil Tigers, and fighting between the two sides has been escalating.
