Skeletons of 21 children found in mass grave in Sri Lanka with ‘signs of torture’

Ms Nagamma was not alone in that belief. Sandrapradasham Niranchan, a lawyer fighting for the families of the disappeared, has filed affidavits on behalf of nine families stating their husbands or sons were taken into custody by the army, navy or unknown groups in Mannar and were among the victims in the mass grave.

“Torturing and killing civilians is a blatant human rights crime. There are children in that mass grave. And we are certain there are more of these gravesites around the country where the disappeared Tamils have been buried,” he said.

The mass grave in Mannar, a Tamil-majority area, was the scene of a number of battles during the war, in which more than 100,000 people died and at least 20,000 – mostly Tamils – remain missing.

Rights groups allege both the military and the Tamil Tigers are to blame for civilian deaths and disappearances. However, former president Mahinda Rajapaksa, who faces international war crimes charges and was instrumental in ending the long drawn-out conflict, has maintained the Sri Lankan military caused not a single civilian casualty.

A spokesperson for the Sri Lankan military claimed it was not responsible for the grave. “The army is not involved in that gravesite. We had nothing to do with it,” brigadier Sumith Atapattu said.

The Tamil Tigers themselves committed many atrocities, ruthlessly executing soldiers, Tamil civilians who did not support them and sometimes their own guerrilla members. The terrorist group, which had sophisticated air, sea and land units is also accused of using civilians as human shields throughout the conflict.

“It is extremely possible that the LTTE (Tamil Tigers) could be responsible for the people in that grave,” Dr Paikiasothy Saravanamuttu, an ethnic Tamil human rights activist, told The Independent.

“But whosoever committed these atrocities has to be held responsible, because this is not just a war crime, but a crime against humanity,” he said.