Colombo: Mine attacks killed two navy sailors and wounded two commandos in northern Sri Lanka on Thursday in the latest in a barrage of violence that is posing the biggest danger yet to the country's 4-year-old cease-fire.
Meanwhile, police found five headless corpses near the capital, Colombo, and said they were investigating whether the deaths are linked to the recent upsurge in fighting with Tamil militants.
This week's bloodshed, including two days of government air strikes against militants positions, threatens to wreck a 2002 truce that ended two decades of fighting between the government and militants seeking a separate state in the north of the island.
While both sides in the conflict and the European team overseeing the agreement say the cease-fire still holds, analysts predict that more violence in the coming days could lead to its total collapse.
The Tamil Tiger militants group says the air strikes on Tuesday and Wednesday near the northeastern port of Trincomalee killed a dozen civilians and forced 40,000 people mostly ethnic Tamils to flee their homes.
The chief cease-fire monitor, Ulf Henricsson of Sweden, traveled Thursday to those areas to inspect damage caused by the airstrikes and to meet with local militant leaders.
He said the militant casualty claims from the airstrikes appeared to be ''fairly correct'', noting that targets were mostly political and military but were situated in civilian areas.
He said he had no information on militant casualties, nor on the numbers of people that have fled their homes.
''It will be good if the government can issue a statement announcing that the attacks are over so that the displaced people can get back to their homes,'' he told The Associated Press by telephone.
The government blamed both of Thursday's mine attacks on the militants.
The two sailors were killed when a mine exploded as they rode on a motorcycle on the Kayts islet in northern Jaffna Peninsula, the navy's media unit said.
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Earlier, two members of a government commando unit formed to help the military in its battle against Tigers were wounded in a mine attack on a fortified truck in northwestern Mannar district, the Defense Ministry said.
The two wounded commandos were taken to a hospital. The extent of their injuries was not immediately known.
The headless male corpses were found in two separate spots at a rubber plantation in Awissawella, a predominantly ethnic Sinhalese area about 35 kilometers (22 miles) east of Colombo, said Deputy Inspector General of Police Nevil Wijesinghe. Many Tamils work at the plantation.
''There is no way to identify the bodies. Four are completely naked and one has only underwear,'' Wijesinghe said.
He said they were likely killed somewhere else then dumped at the plantation.
''We are investigating if the deaths are linked to the ethnic violence or (if) it is a gang war,'' he said.
The Defense Ministry said no new strikes were launched early Thursday following two days of air attacks that were the government's biggest military operation since 2002.
Those strikes were ordered hours after an ethnic Tamil suicide bomber targeted the top government military commander in Colombo, wounding the officer and killing nine other people. They also came in response to Tamil militant attacks on navy ships, the military said.
Military spokesman Brig. Prasad Samarasinghe said the only highway linking the south with the north _ blocked by the government on Wednesday due to security concerns _ reopened Thursday.
The militants, formally known as the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam, or LTTE, said 40,000 people, almost all Tamils, have fled their homes in the northeast and that the militant movement would seek to provide them shelter. Twelve people were killed by the strikes, the group said.
There was no way of immediately verifying the claims.
At least 65,000 people were killed in the two-decade civil war.
The 2002 Norway-brokered truce halted large-scale fighting, but disputes over postwar power-sharing have hindered peace talks, and sporadic violence has raised tensions in recent months.
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