Six soldiers were killed yesterday afternoon at Kondavil on the Palaly-Jaffna Road. They were on board a tractor trailer when it was hit by two claymore mines on the road controlled by the military. It was the highest number of soldiers killed in a single mine blast since the government and the LTTE entered into a truce in February 2002 and comes a day before the change of command of the army. Army Chief Lt. Gen. Shantha Kottegoda will step down today. President Mahinda Rajapakse has named Maj. Gen. Sarath Fonseka as Kottegoda's successor.

The Kondavil blasts come in the backdrop of the killing of two LTTE cadres by unidentified gunmen on Thursday. The LTTE accused the military of supporting a breakaway faction. The Sri Lankan military denies the charges.

Army Headquarters said that three civilians received injuries in the Kondavil blast.

A Jaffna based military official said that there were a series of attacks on the military in populated areas in the peninsula in the aftermath of Thursday's killings at Neerveli.

The blast comes as the Norwegian led Sri Lankan Monitoring Mission (SLMM) urged the government, the LTTE and "all community leaders to do their utmost to calm down the volatile situation before it escalates any further."

The chief truce monitor Hagrup Haukland appealed for calm shortly before LTTE operatives struck at Kondavil.

The military accused the LTTE of killing three Muslims and wounding one on Friday in an LTTE-held area off Muttur.

This followed an attack on two Tamils travelling in a three-wheeler at Thoppur, a predominately Muslim village south of Trincomalee town on Saturday evening. Another Tamil civilian with cut injuries had been admitted to Trincomalee Hospital in unconscious state. A group of Muslims had carried out the attack immediately after Saja Mohaideen, was shot and wounded by unidentified gunmen at 2.40 p.m. in Muttur. Additional troops and police personnel have been sent to Thoppur to quell fresh outbreak of violence.