Sri Lanka on alert as election violence escalates

29 Mar, 2004

Sri Lankan troops have stepped up their guard after gunmen shot and wounded a top election official and a candidate amid fears of more violence ahead of this week's elections, officials said Sunday.
An alert was sounded in eastern Batticaloa district following the overnight shooting of the region's top civil administrator, Ratnam Manoguruswamy, military officials said.
The victim, the top official responsible for conducting Friday's vote in the region, was still in intensive care at a hospital in the capital Colombo Sunday after being airlifted overnight, officials said.
In a separate incident, Tamil candidate T. Maheswaran was shot and wounded in Colombo on Saturday as he left a Hindu temple, police said.
They said police also increased their guard in Colombo after the attack on Maheswaran, who is running for parliament as a candidate from Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe's United National Party (UNP).
The European Union mission observing the election campaign here condemned the shootings.
"Nothing can express the horror and the revulsion that I feel regarding these latest incidents," said the head of the EU mission, John Cushnahan.
"The attempted murders of an election candidate and an election official represent a direct attack on democracy itself."
Another Tamil politician escaped injury in the capital Saturday when an unidentified gunman tried to shoot him, police said.
Maheswaran was recovering at a private hospital here. He was also minister for Hindu religious affairs before he was sacked by President Chandrika Kumaratunga last month after she dissolved parliament and called elections four years ahead of schedule.
Kumaratunga called the early polls to head off a power struggle with the prime minister, whom she accused of conceding too much to Tamil rebels in efforts to end three decades of ethnic bloodshed.
President Kumaratunga in a statement Sunday condemned the spate of shootings and said the violence would undermine free and fair elections.

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