The World - News from Feb. 13, 1989

At least 55 Sri Lankans were killed in the last two days of campaigning for legislative elections, officials said. In the bloodiest attack, more than 50 rebels crept into the rice-farming village of Dutuwewa, about 60 miles northeast of the capital of Colombo, and killed 36 people, 20 of them children, with automatic weapons, clubs and machetes, police said. A Foreign Ministry official blamed the killings on the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam, the most powerful Tamil guerrilla group, which has waged a bloody war for independence since 1983.