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International ceasefire monitors blamed Sri Lankan troops on Wednesday for the killing of 17 aid workers during fighting with Tamil tiger rebels earlier in the month.
The victims were working on tsunami relief projects for international aid group Action Contre La Faim in the north-eastern town of Mutur, the scene of several days of fighting between troops and the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE).
"SLMM is, with the obtained findings, convinced that there cannot be any other armed groups than the security forces who could actually have been behind the act," said a statement from the Sri Lankan Monitoring Mission.
The government has denied troops were involved in the execution style killings and promised an investigation.
The victims, all but one of them ethnic Tamils, were found with gunshot wounds, lying face down in the compound of their office. The killing was the worst mass murder of aid staff since a 2003 bomb attack on the United Nations compound in Baghdad.
The SLMM statement came only days before outgoing Swedish mission head Major General Ulf Henricsson steps down because of demands from the Tigers that all European Union monitors quit. That demand came after the EU declared the Tigers a terrorist organisation.
Monitors from non-EU members Norway and Iceland will remain in Sri Lanka.
SLMM also ruled that a June fragmentation mine attack on a civilian bus that killed almost 70 people was a breach of the ceasefire by the rebels, while blaming the government for a string of similar attacks in rebel areas from April onwards.
Heavy fighting between government forces and the Tigers in August has shattered a 2002 truce, although it still holds on paper. The two sides are now involved in battles around the north-eastern port of Trincomalee and any return to peace seems distant.
Hundreds of troops, rebels and civilians have died in the past month, and more than 200,000 people have fled their homes.
Full stop to ceasefire?
The army said 13 soldiers have been killed in action and 79 wounded in fierce artillery and mortar fire since a new eastern offensive towards the town of Sampur began on Monday. Both sides claim to have killed dozens of foes.
Sampur sits on the southern lip of Trincomalee harbour, 230km
northeast of the capital Colombo, and puts the Tigers in artillery
range of a naval base and maritime supply route to the besieged
army-held Jaffna peninsula in the far north.
"The troops are moving towards Sampur. The main thing of this
operation is to capture it to secure Trincomalee harbour and nearby
civilian areas," said a military spokesman.
The Tigers, who want a separate ethnic Tamil homeland in the north and east, vow they will never relinquish Sampur.
"If the Sri Lankan military aggression continued, it would set a full stop to the February 2002 Ceasefire Agreement," pro-rebel website www.tamilnet.com quoted Tiger military spokesman Rasiah Ilanthiraiyan as saying.
The army launched its heaviest artillery barrage for days towards rebel territory south of Jaffna early on Wednesday, but some schools in the town opened for the first time since the siege began two and a half weeks ago.
"I can hear the shells and I'm a little worried," said civil servant Suresh Kumar as he delivered his son to school. "If things are bad tomorrow I won't let him come. Their life is more important than these exams."
Both the Tigers and the government say they stick by the terms of the truce, but both appear happy to return to a full-blown civil war that has killed more than 65,000 people.
Officials said President Mahinda Rajapakse and Foreign Minister Mangala Samaraweera had flown to London to meet British Prime Minister Tony Blair but had no details.
Violence also erupted elsewhere on the island overnight when Tiger rebels attacked an army camp in the eastern district of Batticaloa with mortar fire, injuring three soldiers.
In Colombo, a Tamil journalist abducted earlier in the week was released blindfolded, but unharmed. There was no word who could be responsible.
