Marxist party calls for Sri Lankan mass grave probe

"We want an investigation into this mass grave. As we know more than 60,000 youth were killed in the 1987-1990 period," Anura Kumara Dissanayake, a senior JVP legislator said.

The JVP believes that the skeletal remains of over 140 people found at Matale at the construction site for a new building, are of victims of the JVP's rebellion of '87-'90.

The party led a bloody rebellion in protest against the Indian intervention in the country's civil war when the Indian Peace Keeping Force was deployed in Sri Lanka's troubled north and east provinces to combat the LTTE.

The party had called it a sell out to India.

Dissanayake said the JVP would keep up the pressure for a credible investigation into the mass grave.

The JVP charged that the current main opposition UNP who were in government then, were as responsible for the execution of rebel youth through para military deployments.

Archaeological officials carried out excavation in late November and the remains are to be sent to US for carbon testing to ascertain the likely era of the graves.