Sri Lanka government concern at outcry over Tamil "execution" video

Sep 3, 2009, 17:00 GMT

Colombo - The Sri Lankan government Thursday expressed concern over the increasing international outcry at a video purportedly showing its military executing suspected Tamil rebels.

The video footage, first broadcast by Britain's Channel 4 and since picked up by other TV stations, websites and news outlets, has been denounced by the authorities in Colombo as fabricated.

The UN, US and Canada have expressed concern about the video footage and called for investigations.

'The government of Sri Lanka reiterates its strong and unequivocal rejection of the contents of the video footage telecast on Channel 4 on the grounds that there is absolutely no truth in its concocted story', a statement from the foreign ministry said.

The statement described the footage as a 'deliberate and sinister attempt to cause embarrassment and bring disrepute to the government of Sri Lanka.'

The video shows a person dressed in military uniform similar to that of a Sri Lanka soldier firing at a the head of a naked youth while eight other corpses, some of them with their hands bound together is visible in the background.

Tamil rebels of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) were finally crushed in a major military drive that lasted nearly three years and ended on May 18 after its entire leadership was killed. The operations brought to an end a 26-year-old civil war in the north and eastern parts of the country.

Since then more than 260,000 civilians still remain in refugee camps and are yet to be allowed to resettled in the former war-torn areas in the central part of the northern province.