Police fire injures Muslim youth

[TamilNet, Sunday, 29 November 1998, 20:49 GMT]
A Muslim youth was wounded in a Police shoot out in the village of Meenodaikkaddu, in the Ampara district, this evening around 7 p.m. A Police party, providing security to a Sri Lanka Muslim Congress convention at Akkaraipattu, a booming Muslim - Tamil town on the south-eastern coast, had rushed to Meenodaikkaddu upon the receipt of information that some Liberation Tigers were in the area and surrounded and fired on a house where they were said to be hiding.

Sources said there was no indication of a Tiger group in the village but a Muslim youth on the road was wounded in the Police firing and has been sent to the Ampara hospital.

Meenodaikkaddu was a prosperous Tamil village until the 1994. Since then almost all the Tamil residents have left and the village is now predominantly Muslim.

Five bystanders were wounded when a grenade lobbed by unidentified persons on a tailor's shop, this evening around 8 p.m., at Ottamavadi, a Muslim town 34 kilometers north of Batticaloa, exploded. The condition of one person is said to be serious.

All were rushed to the Batticaloa hospital. The owner of the shop sews uniforms for the army and the Police, sources said.

The grenade attack ,however, was attributed to a local vendetta.