'No evidence slain girls are LTTE cadres'

A team from the United Nations children's fund Unicef had visited the site in the northern rebel-controlled district of Mullaitivu and was horrified at the extent of the carnage, said Sri Lankan representative Joanna van Gerten.

"These were children from surrounding schools in the area who were brought there for a two-day training workshop on first aid, by whom we don't know yet," she told AFP.

"We have not been able to come down to who organised this training."

While Unicef has documentary evidence to prove that the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) recruit children, there is no evidence that those killed and injured on Monday were among them.

"As of this time, we don't have any evidence that they are LTTE cadres," she said.

Sri Lanka said yesterday the age of its enemy was of no concern after the air force killed at least 19 people, many of them teenagers, during a bombing raid in Tamil Tiger territory a day earlier.

Tiger rebels said on Monday the air force killed 61 schoolgirls who were attending a first-aid course. The government says it bombed a Tiger training and transit camp.

"The fact is that gender or the age limit is of no concern when it comes to training and when it comes to soldiers, because they are carrying arms in order to kill the enemy (government forces)," Defence spokesman Keheliya Rambukwella told a news conference.

"So even it is a 17-year-old child in terms of age, they are soldiers who are prepared to kill whoever comes in front of them. Therefore, the age or the gender is not what is important."

Tamil Tiger guerrillas said 61 schoolgirls were killed and 150 wounded when air force jets Monday hit a "Senchcholai", an orphanage run by the LTTE in Mullaitivu.

The government denied it bombed an orphanage, saying it had targeted a LTTE training centre and that those killed could have been child soldiers recruited by the rebels.

Van Gerten said the Unicef team that visited a hospital found more than 100 children, mostly girls aged between 16 to 19, being treated for various injuries. She did not have exact figures as to how many were killed or injured.

"We visited the site and saw severed limbs that were there, but we don't know if they were from the children. Most of the children we saw in the hospital had head injuries, shrapnel injuries," van Gerten said.

"This is a horrific incident, perhaps unintended, that has affected the children. In the rising violence here, we are also seeing children getting caught in the middle repeatedly," she said. "There is a long series of events and it's rising, the incidents involving children are also rising."

Both sides must take care not to harm civilians especially innocent children who are the most vulnerable in wartime, she said.

Fears that the rebels could stage retaliatory attacks forced the government to announce an indefinite closure of all schools from Tuesday.