SL troops temporarily withdrawn from Trinco town

[TamilNet, Thursday, 17 November 2005, 07:07 GMT]
Soldiers of the Sri Lanka Army, Sri Lanka Navy and police personnel of the Sri Lanka Police deployed in main junctions and near schools in the Trincomalee town since the controversy of the illegal erection of Buddha statue in the vicinity of the Trincomalee central bus stand have been withdrawn to barracks from Thursday early morning in keeping with the election law that no security personnel should be seen within five hundred meters from the polling stations, Sri Lanka Monitoring Mission (SLMM) sources in the east port town said.

However the temporary structures put up as checkpoints and sandbags are seen at every junction indicating that troops would take up their position again later Thursday night once the presidential poll that began in the morning at seven a.m. is over, sources said.

Troops manning the checkpoints surrounding the controversial Buddha statue are still holding their position, civil sources said.

Meanwhile, Sri Lanka Air Force has made a complaint with the SLMM in Trincomalee that its checkpoint at Morawewa along Trincomalee-Anurdhapura highway had been attacked by a group of unidentified persons emerged from the nearby jungle on Wednesday evening around 6 p.m. No causalty was reported in the firing by that group, the complaint said.