Quotes of the Day

When the Sri Lanka government and separatist Tamil rebels signed a cease-fire agreement in 2002, the world hailed the country's chance to achieve a lasting peace after 19 years of civil war. Now, that promise is a distant memory. A steady trickle of bombings and murders has burst into a flood of deaths in recent weeks, and parts of the country's north and east have turned into intense battle zones. In the past week alone, more than 100 soldiers and an unknown number of rebel fighters have been killed. The issue of whether Sri Lanka has fallen back into civil war is "really more of a question that the international [community] is asking," says Nilan Fernando, Sri Lanka representative for the Asia Foundation. "For Sri Lankans, for Sinhalese, for Tamils, and for Muslims, there's no question. We are back at war."

Given the grisly events of recent weeks, it's becoming difficult to doubt that assessment. On Aug. 14, dozens of schoolgirls were killed when the Sri Lankan Air Force bombed what it said was a training camp for the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (L.T.T.E.), also known as the Tamil Tigers. Outraged L.T.T.E. officials, who put the death toll at 51 girls, said that they were attending classes in first aid; the government insisted they were child soldiers and thus legitimate targets.

Ten days before, 17 aid workers from the NGO Action Against Hunger were murdered in the eastern town of Muttur; the Tigers blamed the government, which denied the claim. The massacre followed clashes late last month touched off by a dispute over water in the east of the country, during which the Tigers blocked off an irrigation channel that supplied water to 15,000 farming families. The battles that followed forced 45,000 people from their homes, pushing the total estimated number of displaced civilians in the country to more than 100,000.

The heavy fighting has been concentrated in the northeast, but the violence has also spread to Colombo, Sri Lanka's capital, where Pakistani Ambassador Bashir Wali Mohamed was targeted last Monday in a mine attack blamed on the Tamil rebels. He survived, but seven others were killed. Two days later the South African cricket team cut short a tour of the country. The government also closed state-run schools last week out of fear of reprisals for the deaths of the Tamil schoolgirls.

For now, there seems to be little hope that the fighting can be controlled. Late last week the government launched new attacks in Jaffna and Kilinochchi in the north. "The unraveling of the peace process is a train wreck in slow motion," says Fernando. "It's agonizing to watch. The trend is downward and I expect it to continue."

• Austin Ramzy
• Despite the ceasefire, Sri Lanka's government and Tamil rebels are locked into all-out conflict