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From a honeymoon into a hail of bullets

Christine Jayasinghe in Colombo

A British photographer probably missed the picture of his life and the editor of a Maldivian newspaper his big story when they saw exploding aircraft and gunmen running on the tarmac at Colombo airport.

"Suddenly it was like fireworks on Guy Fawkes out there," said cameraman Jimmy Bellieni who was at Katunayake International Airport where Tamil Tigers carried out a daring suicide attack on Tuesday.

Bellieni, who had got married on a sunny beach in southern Sri Lanka only two weeks ago, said, "The ground shook under my feet and everything began exploding around us. I didn't want to stay there."

Ali Rafeeq, editor of the Maldives' Haveeru daily, and his wife were snoozing in the transit lounge when they were rudely woken by gunfire. "Bullets were flying at the airport. There was so much panic," said Rafeeq. "We just rushed out of the terminal building."

Bellieni, who was settling down with his newly wed wife and his two daughters for a three-hour wait in a lounge at the airport before boarding the flight to London, said he suddenly heard bangs and bullets whistling past him.

Hundreds of passengers were waiting to board flights when the separatist Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam mounted an attack at Katunayake airport, Sri Lanka's main air force base and the country's only international airport.

At least nine guerrillas and five troopers died while eight military aircraft and five Sri Lankan Airlines planes were reduced to wrecks on the tarmac.

"We ran downstairs and got out of the terminal building, but we stood there in the dark like headless chicken not knowing whether to turn left or right," Bellieni told IANS when he reached Hotel Lanka Oberoi in the capital Colombo.

Rafeeq said he had crawled on all fours to dodge the bullets and made his way to the main road where he was picked up by a passing vehicle and taken to a nearby house.

Rafeeq, who was en route to Male from Bangkok, said he saw several British tourists, some of whom sought shelter with his wife and him at a local resident's house. "We lost our passports. There was no one to help us at all."

Said Bellieni: "We spend an idyllic two weeks in Koggala (in southern Sri Lanka) without a hassle in the world and then we get shot at."

The Bellieni family ducked into an empty shelter across the main entrance as the sound of exploding aircraft shook them. Charging across the road with the wedding party of 14 friends and relatives who had accompanied them, they headed for a ditch with scores of other fleeing, screaming passengers, where they huddled for over an hour.

"There, I lost my wife Candace and two daughters. We got separated and I did not know what happened to them until I came to Colombo. We had to fend for ourselves," he said.

Officials at the British high commission in Colombo later tracked them down to another city hotel. His younger daughter, three-year-old Lola, was in shock and had to be carried by a friend along the mile-long stretch of uninhabited roadway leading from the main highway to the airport. He said he saw disabled passengers too making their way along the road.

Bellieni said he had lost his passport and money and believed that his baggage must have been destroyed in the fire that engulfed the Sri Lankan Airlines Airbus that he was to board around 7am.

"We did not know this was some anniversary of a Tamil massacre. Our tour operators did not tell us a word about it. At least the Americans warned their citizens, but not the British," said Bellieni.

The separatist LTTE steps up attacks in July every year to mark the anniversary of the 1983 ethnic riots when an estimated 400 to 600 Tamils were killed and their homes and shops looted and burnt.

The US state department last week warned Americans against travelling to the island amid widespread opposition unrest.

Indo-Asian News Service

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