Sri Lankan election attacks
Source:news24.com
17/11/2005 13:49 - (SA)
Vote for me - get a cow!
Colombo - Ten people have been wounded after unidentified attackers lobbed grenades at polling booths in the volatile northeast of Sri Lanka.
The Thursday attack ripped through a booth at Chenkaladi, in the district of Batticaloa, wounding two women and five men.
Police said three people were also wounded in a grenade attack outside another polling station in the same district. The district witnessed heavy fighting between the government and Tamil rebels before a February 2002 truce.
Two people were killed and five were wounded in another explosion inside a home. Police said they could not immeditely link the explosion to the presidential elections.
Seven people were killed in the eastern province on the eve of the election, despite a high state of alert for police and troops.
However, police reported the rest of the couintry was largely peaceful.
About 60 000 people were killed in the island's embattled northern and eastern regions between 1972 and 2002 before the civial war truce went into effect.
Despite the truce, over 190 people were killed in the same areas this year alone, according to the Scandinavian truce monitoring team.
Election officials said voter turnout in the Tamil-dominated northeast was low.