Sri Lanka Tamil Terror

Sri Lanka seemed gripped by madness last week as a series of violent attacks resulted in the slaughter of more than 200 people. The killings began when separatist guerrillas belonging to the country's predominantly Hindu Tamil minority hijacked a bus and headed for Anuradhapura, a city largely inhabited by Buddhist Sinhalese. As the guerrillas drove into the city's crowded main bus station, they opened fire with automatic weapons, killing about 100 men, women and children. Then they drove to the Sri Maha Bodhiya, a sacred Buddhist site, and fired indiscriminately into a crowd that included nuns and monks. The rebels continued on to Sri Lanka's northwest coast, attacking a police station and a game sanctuary on the way, and may have escaped by boat to India, where the Tamil Nadu state is home to 50 million Tamils. The macabre ride resulted in the massacre of 146 people.

By attacking the Sri Maha Bodhiya, the site of a sacred 2,200-year-old bo tree said to have grown from a sapling of the tree under which Buddha found enlightenment, the guerrillas seemed almost eager to provoke retaliation. It did not take long. In the bloodiest strike, assailants boarded a ferry off the northern coast of Sri Lanka, near Jaffna, and hacked 39 Tamils to death with axes, swords and knives. The Sri Lankan navy has denied accusations that it was involved in the slaughter; the same day, police surprised Tamil rebels hiding in a cave in the Eastern province and killed 20 guerrillas.

The week's death list was evidence of the growing struggle between the island's 2.6 million Tamils and its 11 million Sinhalese. Over the past two years Tamil guerrillas have stepped up their attacks on troops in an effort to force the government into granting them an independent homeland. The Tamils claim that in the 37 years since Sri Lanka achieved independence from Britain, their political rights have been gradually eroded by the Sinhalese majority. Last week's Tamil rampage through Anuradhapura was the guerrillas' first major attack on unarmed civilians.

As the violence becomes more widespread, the country is growing increasingly angry at the government of President J.R. Jayawardene, who seems paralyzed by the rebel challenge. Indeed, at week's end Jayawardene, who is ) both the Defense Minister and the Commander in Chief of the armed forces, had not even visited the site of the Anuradhapura massacre.