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Sri Lanka assassination endangers peace
(AP )
Updated: 2005-08-14 10:29

The Sri Lankan military scoured the country Sunday as the hunt continued for suspected Tamil Tiger rebels blamed for assassinating the nation's foreign minister and triggering fears of a return to civil war, AP reported.

Policemen stand guard in front of the house where the suspected Tamil rebel sniper shot Sri Lanka's Foreign Minister Lakshman Kadirgamar, an outspoken critic of the Tamil Tigers, in Colombo, Sri Lanka, Aug.13, 2005. [AP]
Though the government has not taken steps to break a three-year-old cease-fire with the Liberation Tigers of Tamileelam, officials from around the world urged both sides to press ahead with the country's faltering peace process and respect the truce.

A state of emergency went into effect within hours of the killing of the heavily protected Foreign Minister Lakshman Kadirgamar, shot by snipers Friday evening at his home after taking a swim.

Kadirgamar, 73, an ethnic Tamil who led efforts to ban the Tigers as a terrorist organization but later backed peace efforts, was shot in the head and chest.

Soldiers scoured the capital for suspects, searching homes and stopping cars, and the military aircraft covered Tamil Tiger territory _ even though Tigers denied any responsibility for the shooting. The search continued Sunday.

"It is a grave setback to the peace process," an official who leads government peace efforts, Jayantha Dhanapala, told reporters. "Restarting (the peace process) will be seriously undermined."

The Tigers began fighting in 1983 for a separate homeland for ethnic Tamils, claiming discrimination by the majority Sinhalese. The civil war killed nearly 65,000 people in the country of 19 million before a Norwegian-brokered cease-fire in 2002.
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