Killing continues in Lanka amid peace move

On Friday, Nordic truce monitors questioned whether the 2002 ceasefire that halted two decades of fighting still held. Later that night, a bomb ripped through one of their vehicles in the first attack on monitors, but no-one was nearby.

"It was definitely not intended to kill anyone," said Sri Lanka Monitoring Mission (SLMM) spokeswoman Helen Olafsdottir.

"We cannot rule out that it was someone trying to scare us away. We are not pulling out -- it would send a strong message that if anyone threw a firecracker in our direction we would leave."

More than 100 people have died in violence in the past month, SLMM says, including dozens of troops in suspected Tiger claymore fragmentation mine ambushes and attacks in minority Tamil dominated areas of the island's north and east.

But the recent violence pales in comparison to the two decades of war that preceded the ceasefire, killing more than 64,000 and leaving the north and east -- also one of the areas worst hit by the 2004 tsunami -- impoverished and destroyed.

Police said two Tamil men had been shot dead in the eastern Muslim town of Akkaraipattu -- scene of tensions between Tamils and Muslims -- while the army said it had recovered two claymores on the army-held but Tamil-dominated Jaffna peninsula.

With Tiger rebels widely believed to be operating behind government lines and the rebels saying a breakaway rebel faction in the east is now government-backed, it is difficult to tell who slain individuals are or who killed them.