UN 'may suspend' Sri Lankan aid

The aid workers were found shot dead in Muttur in the north-east

The UN has warned that it may suspend aid operations in Sri Lanka after truce monitors there accused the military of killing 17 workers of a French charity.

The monitors said the deaths this month were "a gross violation" of the ceasefire by the security forces.

Sri Lanka's government denied the allegations, calling them "biased".

Meanwhile European Union (EU) nationals among the monitors are leaving Sri Lanka, meeting a deadline for them to stop work set by Tamil Tiger rebels.

The Tamil Tigers insisted they should go after the EU banned them as a terrorist organisation earlier this year.

Many of the EU monitors from Sweden, Finland and Denmark are already reported to have left, with a smaller contingent from Iceland and Norway - non-EU states - remaining.

'Unacceptable'

The UN's emergency relief co-ordinator, Jan Egeland, said that it was unacceptable that the government had not provided any explanation regarding the execution of the 17 local employees of the French charity, Action Against Hunger.

Monitors also blamed Tamil Tigers for a deadly bus attack in June

"We cannot continue in this area unless people will be held accountable for the execution of 17 of our colleagues," he said in a statement.

Mr Egeland said that the conflict in Sri Lanka had deepened while the eyes of the world were on Lebanon.

He said that there were 220,000 newly displaced people in Sri Lanka who needed aid money amounting to $37.5m.

But he said "humanitarian assistance" could not continue until those responsible for the killings were held to account.

Sri Lanka Monitoring Mission (SLMM) said on Wednesday that it was "convinced" no other armed group could have been behind the killings near Muttur in the north-east in early August.

But the government says that the allegations were "totally baseless".

The aid staff - all but one ethnic Tamils - were working on tsunami relief projects in an area that had seen several days of fighting between Tamil Tiger rebels and government troops.

'Assassination'

Maj Gen Ulf Henricsson, the SLMM head, said in a statement that he had held "confidential conversations with highly reliable sources" on who was most likely to have been responsible for the killings.

We cannot continue in this area unless people will be held accountable for the execution of 17 of our colleagues UN Emergency Relief Coordinator, Jan Egeland

"The views have not proved contradictory and the security forces of Sri Lanka are widely and consistently deemed to be responsible for the incident," he said.

Fifteen of the bodies were found lying down and shot at close range on 7 August in a case that caused an international outcry.

Two other bodies were found later.

The statement called the incident a "committed act of assassination" that was "one of the most serious recent crimes against humanitarian aid workers worldwide".

A ceasefire in Sri Lanka was sealed in February 2002 but in the past few months the two sides have engaged in open conflict in the north and east.

However, on Wednesday Sri Lankan Foreign Minister Mangala Samaraweera denied his country was in a state of civil war.

"To have a [civil] war, you must have two sides. At the moment, the government is merely responding to [Tamil Tiger] aggression," he told the BBC.