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The Vaharai bombing is a disputed event in the Sri Lankan civil war. It occurred on November 7, 2006 when, according to survivors of the incident interviewed by Reuters, the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam fired artillery at Sri Lankan military personnel from near a school where minority Sri Lankan Tamil refugees displaced by the current phase of the Sri Lankan civil war had taken shelter. The Sri Lankan Army returned fire and around 45 civilians were killed. Over 100 were injured and admitted to the local hospitals. However, people who were interviewed by Human Rights Watch claimed that the LTTE did not fire artillery. Further, the rebel LTTE denies firing artillery from close to the school. The incident occurred at around 11.35 a.m close to Kathiraveli, a coastal village in Vaharai peninsula of the Batticaloa district in eastern Sri Lanka. ==The incident== The LTTE claimed the shelling killed 43 displaced Tamil civilians who had been taking shelter after the recent flare up of the Sri Lankan civil war. However the SLMM counted 23 bodies.〔 About 300 were wounded, 127 of them seriously. Many were killed when two shells hit school buildings housing a large number civilians.〔 〕 Shelling also damaged the Sonobo Children's Home seriously injuring nearly 12 infants.〔 〕 The town (Kathiraveli ) in the Vaharai region is mainly populated by minority Sri Lankan Tamils and indigenous Vedda people. It was under the de facto control of the LTTE rebels. The Sri Lankan government responded saying that the refugees housed within the school were being used as human shields by the LTTE. The Nordic ceasefire monitors, the Sri Lanka Monitoring Mission, said they did not see any LTTE military installations nearby. However the government's account was supported by survivors of the incident who had fled the area and subsequently taken shelter in government controlled territory. Reuters reported one survivor saying, "First I heard big guns fired (by the LTTE) from the camp area. I jumped into a bunker. Then the army returned fire and I heard big explosions in the camp." However, Human Rights Watch conducted interviews with 12 witnesses to the attack. All witnesses said that there were no LTTE fighters located in or adjacent to the IDP camp at the time of the attack or directly before. They also reported that the nearest LTTE military base was the Sinnakangai camp on the coast about two kilometers away. None of the interviewees had seen or heard outgoing shelling earlier that day. Another women who lived near the IDP camp claimed “Before the shelling I heard nothing. It was sudden, we didn’t expect it.” Another man whose children were wounded in the shelling said that there was no LTTE present near the camp and he did not hear any shelling from the LTTE. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Vaharai bombing」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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