LTTE Headquarters,
                                                Tamil Eelam.
                                                28. August 1997
PRESS RELEASE
NEWS FROM TAMIL EELAM

FIVE-YEAR OLD GIRL KILLED IN FIERCE SHELLING OF OLUMADU
	A Tamil girl of five was among two people killed yesterday morning
	when Sri Lanka's Jaya Sikurui forces heavily shelled the Vanni town of
	Olumadu, levelling most buildings and driving residents in panic to
	other areas. Olumadu is far away from the theatre of Sri Lanka's
	military operations, which means the army shells were deliberately
	fired to harass and uproot civilians.
	
	The name of the five-year old killed was Sayantheni. Her mother says
	the girl had fallen asleep on her lap minutes before; after she put
	the girl to bed, the shells started falling bringing injury to the
	mother and death to the daughter. The other fatality was a middle-aged
	man whose body now lies in Mallavi hospital in a blood-soaked blue
	sarong. As many as 25 other civilians were badly injured in the
	shelling of Olumadu and are now in Mallivi hospital.
	
	Olumadu's population had recently increased with the influx of
	thousands of Tamil refugees, but now people are fleeing once more to
	escape the artillery here. Most houses have been demolished by the
	intense shelling and many large trees have collapsed. Sri Lanka seems
	determined to make more and more Tamils homeless as part of its
	military strategy.
	
	Mankulam -- another town away from the theatre of military operations
	-- was also shelled around midday yesterday. There have been no human
	casualties reported yet but many houses caught fire and continued
	burning till late evening.
	
MILITARY ARRESTS CLERGY AND CLAIMS THEY ARE  TERRORISTS
	A Sinhala military spokesman claimed that three "Tamil terrorists"
	were recently captured in Kilinochchi. This claim is palpably false
	and typical of the government's propaganda machinery. On the 25th of
	this month a pastor and two of his attendants went to a dairy farm
	managed by the Church of South India in Murippu (Kilinochchi). Sri
	Lankan soldiers in hiding ambushed all three of them. The innocent men
	are now being held in the Kilinochchi army camp. To the government's
	forces all Tamils are what they refer to as "terrorists" - even, it
	seems, men of the cloth.
	
MULLAITIVU HOSPITAL - SUPPLIES RUN DRY
	Mullaitivu hospital's medical supplies have run out due to the
	government's medical embargo to unoccupied Vanni. Doctors here are now
	having to turn away Tamils without being able to offer treatment.
	Private dispensaries, meanwhile, are expensive and beyond the reach of
	the average person. The people of Mullaitivu are afflicted with a
	number of deadly viral diseases. There are outbreaks of malaria,
	respiratory tract disease and scabies among mainly displaced people.
	None of these can be treated by the existing medical supplies in
	Mullaitivu.
	
OCCUPIED JAFFNA - 25 FAMILIES FORCED OUT OF HOMES
	25 Tamil families who lived for many years near the Meenachi temple
	(Jaffna town) -- close to the Pannai chest clinic -- have been driven
	out of their homes by the Sinhala military administration here. The
	families have been forced to put up in the abandoned shop buildings of
	the CSK Coconut Mills, which were heavily bombed during the Sinhala
	invasion of Jaffna.

Political Committee,
Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam
	
(English translation of the LTTE statement released by LTTE
International Secretariat, 211 Katherine Road, London E6 1BU,
United Kingdom.  Tel:0181- 503 4294)