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Sri Lanka

French aid group to cut staff in Sri Lanka

PARIS, Sept 6 (Reuters) - A Paris-based relief organisation that lost 17 local staff in a massacre in Sri Lanka has decided to reduce its presence on the island, a senior official of the organisation said on Wednesday.

The murdered Action Contre la Faim (Action Against Hunger) team, mostly Tamils who had been working on reconstruction projects after the 2004 tsunami, was found dead last month at a base camp in the northeastern town of Mutur in a region fought over by government forces and Tamil Tiger rebels.

Both sides have accused the other of the killings but United Nations truce monitors said last month it appeared likely that government troops were responsible.

"Our administrative council has decided to reduce our numbers to reduce the risk to our teams," Operational Director Thomas Gonnet of ACF told a news conference.

"We are abandoning all work related to reconstruction but remain focused on emergency assistance," he said.

Sri Lankan Ambassador to France Chitranganee Wagiswara, also present at an ACF news conference, condemned the killings and rejected the accusations by the UN officials.

"The Sri Lankan government is fully committed to a full and impartial investigation," she told reporters.

But she stressed that her government rejects the allegations of outgoing truce monitor General Ulf Henricsson, who has said that security forces were responsible for the killings.

ACF considers Henricsson's observations important for the investigation.

ACF's scaling back of its operations will cut local employee numbers to around 50 from some 200 with expatriate staff cut to seven or eight from 15.