Tamil National
Alliance MPs took part in a ceremony commencing the construction of a
memorial shrine commemorating 21 school children that where killed in a
Sri Lankan Air Force attack on a school in Jaffna 20 years ago.
TNA MPs
including Mavai Senathirajah and M A Sumanthiran were present at the
ceremony and took party in laying the foundation stone for the shrine on
Tuesday.
The Nagar Koyil
School was bombed on 21 September 1995 hours after the Sri Lankan
government enforced censorship on press reports on the military conflict
between government forces and the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam
(LTTE).
The Sri Lankan government, denying that the attack was on a school, instead alleged that it was a LTTE base.
The British Refugee Council, in a statement made after the bombings, said,
"Hours after the
Sri Lanka government imposed military censorship on press reporting of
its bitter and unpredictable war... on 21 September, aircraft bombed a
Jaffna school yard crammed with 750 children on their lunch break,
killing 34 and seriously injuring over 150 others."
Two surgeons
from the international medical relief agency, Medicine Sans Frontiers,
worked through the night in Jaffna hospitals treating severely injured
children from the attack.
- Nagerkoil School bombed under cover of press censorship - 22 September 1995
On 22 September Nagerkoil Central School in the Jaffna peninsula was
bombed. The intensified aerial bombing and shelling by Sri Lankan
government forces came about within hours of the government's imposition
of Press Censorship midnight September 21. |
