Police fire wounds student

[TamilNet, Sunday, 13 December 1998, 08:57 GMT]
Ponnuthurai Nakuleswaran,15, a student at the government school in Thambalagamam, 22 kilometers southwest of Trincomalee, was seriously wounded this morning around 9.30 a.m. when military trained Policemen opened fire indiscriminately in this large Tamil village.

The boy was admitted to the Trincomalee hospital with a bullet lodged in his brain.

Doctors who examined him this afternoon said that he is in coma and is very unlikely to survive.

Nakuleswaran had been reading on the veranda of his home at Sippiththidal, a section of the Thambalagamam village surrounded by paddy fields when the military trained personnel at the local Police post had begun firing indiscriminately.

People who were working in the fields had fled to safety when the shooting started said sources.

Police in Trincomalee town said they were not aware of the reason for the firing.