World Notes SRI LANKA

The incident was a terrifyingly familiar episode in Sri Lanka's bloody four- year-old civil war -- except for its gruesome magnitude. Last week separatist Tamil rebels, who are fighting for an independent homeland in Northern and Eastern provinces, waylaid six vehicles with mostly Sinhalese holidaymakers returning home from celebrating the Sri Lankan New Year. The rebels dragged passengers, including women and children, from the buses and trucks, then mowed them down with machine-gun fire. When the shooting stopped, at least 126 travelers lay dead on the jungle roadside. The violence prompted the government to terminate a cease-fire with the rebels and ended, for now, any realistic hopes for negotiations.