In June, East Village photojournalist Q. Sakamaki was in Sri Lanka documenting the renewed hostilities between the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam separatists and the Sri Lankan government. Although a ceasefire had been in place since 2002, following six months of renewed fighting, on June 15, land mines blew up a crowded bus, leaving 64 dead, including 15 children, raising fears of a return to full-scale war. The ethnic Sinhalese-led government accuses the Tigers of the attack; the Tamil group denies responsibility. The majority Hindu Tamils want to secede from the largely Buddhist country.
This page, top to bottom: The day after the bus attack, at a funeral home in Anuradhpuraq, in northern Sri Lanka, funeral workers prepare a child killed in the explosion for a mass burial; on June 13, in Kilinochchi, the L.T.T.E. stronghold, Tamil civilians conduct military training — using logs to simulate guns — after the escalation of violence; the children’s coffins in the mass grave.
Sinhalese children killed in the attack are laid out in a Kabithigollewa school for their relatives to identify them; in the war-torn town of Jaffna, a Tamil schoolchild passes a government checkpoint; in Kilinochchi, Kandiah Sinnamma, a Tamil, 62, by photos of her sons, Periya, who died at 19 in 1987, left, and Sinna, who died in 18 at 1991, both in suicide attacks; a Tamil woman in her Jaffna building riddled with bullet holes.
