SLA rounds up thousand young men, women in Batticaloa

[TamilNet, Monday, 31 October 2005, 11:50 GMT]
More than one thousand young men and women from areas of Mamankam, Jayanthipuram, Iruthayapuram and Urani, some popular and heavily populated suburbs of Batticaloa town were herded into common grounds by the Sri Lankan Military personnel in a cordon and search operation that was launched Monday early morning at 4:00 a.m. Masked paramilitary cadres wearing military uniforms assisted the Sri Lanka army personnel to round up the Tamil youth and parade them to common grounds for identification.

Over 500 SLA personnel participated in the operation that went on for more than 10 hours.

Twenty Tamil youths, identified by masked-men were detained by the SLA forces for further questioning.

Civilian sources in Batticaloa town said that the return to arbitrary round-ups by SL armed Forces on a big scale involving large number of personnel and masked paramilitary cadres, frequent only during pre-ceasefire days, has caused panic and confusion among the population in Sri Lanka Army held areas in the Batticaloa district.