Four civilians shot dead in Jaffna

[TamilNet, Monday, 18 September 2006, 23:26 GMT]
Unidentified armed men shot and killed four Tamil civilians on Sunday afternoon and Monday morning in separate incidents in Jaffna district. Victims of the three incidents have been identified. The deceased in the fourth incident is yet to be identified.

In the first incident that took place around 1 p.m. on Sunday unidentified armed men had gone to the shop posing as customers to buy plantains and shot the trader Murugiah Kugaraj, 36, of Irupalai located in Valikamam East.

In the second incident around 3:30 p.m. on Sunday armed men called out Loganathan Selvakumar, 26, from his house located along School Lane in Siruppiddy and shot him dead.

On the same day at around 8:30 p.m. unidentified gunmen went to the house of Kanthasamy Thayalan, 40, a carpenter by profession and a father of five children of Alukai in Alaveddy North, called him out and shot him dead.

In the fourth incident the owner of a video shop located along Kondavil Road in Inuvil was shot dead by unidentified armed men but he is yet to be identified.

Meanwhile, Sri Lanka Army (SLA) extended the normal dusk to dawn curfew to noon on Monday in Valikaman and conducted a combined cordon and search operation in Valikamam West. Large number of youths and young women were taken by SLA soldiers to nearby places of worship and paraded before masked men for identification and were subjected to severe interrogation.