COLOMBO  - Three Sri Lankan soldiers were found shot dead after an argument between them in the Tamil-majority Jaffna peninsula, the army said on Friday. The three soldiers were the first to be killed in the far northern peninsula since the end of the Indian Ocean island’s civil war in 2009, when government forces defeated the separatist Tamil Tiger rebels after 37 years of fighting. But the army said in a statement on its website: “Initial inquiries have revealed that the shooting was due to a personal dispute among the three soldiers and that there was no third party involvement.”
The defence ministry in a separate statement added that the shooting was not related to “terrorism, nor did it pose a threat to national security”.
A police source in Jaffna, who asked not to be identified, told AFP that preliminary enquiries indicated that two of the soldiers had been killed by a colleague, who then shot himself.
Jaffna was a stronghold of the Tamil Tigers for nearly five years till they were driven out in December 1995.
The separatist force was wiped out by the Sri Lankan army in a huge military campaign in 2009, which has been the subject of allegations of war crimes, denied by Colombo.