Lanka war zone grave an ordinary cemetery

colombo — A grave site with over 60 bodies in the former war zone, suspected to be a mass grave, is just a normal cemetery, said the Sri Lankan Archeology Department.

Road workers laying down pipelines last December stumbled upon the grave at Thiruketheeswaram in Mannar, a former war zone that was under the control of the Tamil Tiger rebels for 15 years.

The discovery sparked speculations that the grave site was a mass grave containing bodies of Tamil civilians who disappeared during the country’s war between the government forces and the Tamil Tigers.

However, the bodies unearthed have been buried since the 1930s, the Archeological Department revealed at a Press briefing, dismissing war deaths as the country’s war began only in 1983. “Investigations carried out by the department have revealed that the grave site has existed since the 1930s and that it is an ordinary cemetery,” said the department’s director general Senarath Dissanayake.

“The bodies had been buried with the hands on the belly with the heads in a westerly direction as in normal burials,” he added.

He further clarified that the bodies in the Mannar grave site were buried separately and in an orderly fashion as would be done in a cemetery.