personalized shirts: T-shirts show slain Sri Lankans worked for French NGO

By Peter Apps

TRINCOMALEE, Sri Lanka (Reuters) - Fifteen local staff for the French aid group Action Contre La Faim found executed in eastern Sri Lanka after a fierce battle between the army and Tamil Tigers have been identified by their personalized T-shirts, a top aid official said on Monday.

Fourteen Tamils and a Muslim were found on Sunday in the ruined remains of their office after Tamil Tiger rebels pulled out of the eastern town of Mutur, site of the fiercest fighting since a 2002 truce halted two decades of civil war.

The aid workers were helping families battered by the 2004 tsunami. Most of them were found shot in the head.

"We had a team, which on hearing their staff had been attacked, visited their office in Mutur," said Jeevan Thiagarajah, Executive Director of aid group umbrella body the Consortium for Humanitarian Agencies (CHA).

"We found their office trashed and found 15 individuals, 11 male, four female, who were wearing their T-shirts, lying face down dead in their compound," he added. "Every one of them, unfortunately, is wearing their Action Contre La Faim T-shirts."

Action Contre La Faim said they had no further details.

"Today we will go out to collect the bodies and do our best to carry them back," one ACF staffer said by telephone.

The pro-rebel website www.tamilnet.com has already blamed the army for the killings. The military, which now has control of Mutur -- a ghost town after an estimated 20,000-30,000 residents fled shelling last week -- accuses the Tigers.

The bodies were found by the army when the Tigers had taken control of certain pockets in the town and when they pulled back it was reported by civilians that they had robbed banks and killed indiscriminately," said Major Upali Rakjapakse, senior coordinator at the national security media centre.

"It could have happened during that time."

Like most of the east coast, Mutur was hard hit by the tsunami, which killed 35,000 people around Sri Lanka. Tsunami damage is still very visible in the town and rebuilding has been slowed by recent conflict.

(Reporting by Simon Gardner)