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GALLE, Sri Lanka (AP) -- This week's surge in violence in Sri Lanka comes as the South Asia island nation faces increasing international pressure to return to the negotiating table.
Suspected Tamil Tiger rebels posing as fishermen blew up two boats in a suicide ambush on a Sri Lankan naval base Wednesday. (Full story)
The bombing in Galle was the second such suicide attack on the Sri Lankan navy this week. On Monday, a suicide bomber rammed a truck filled with explosives into a military bus convoy in central Sri Lanka, in the deadliest insurgent attack since a 2002 cease-fire temporarily halted the country's civil war. (Full story)
U.S. envoy Richard Boucher is scheduled to make a two-day visit to Sri Lanka beginning Thursday.
On Wednesday Japanese peace envoy Yasushi Akashi was scheduled to hold talks with rebel leaders in the north Wednesday.
Norwegian envoy Jon Hanssen-Bauer arrived in Colombo on Tuesday for meetings with government and rebel officials.
The Tamil Tigers have been fighting since 1983 for a separate homeland for the Tamil minority in the north and east, citing decades of discrimination by the majority Sinhalese. About 65,000 people were killed before the 2002 cease-fire.
Aid workers bodies exhumed
In the northeast, meanwhile, authorities exhumed the bodies of aid workers killed in August.
Gregoire Lechat from Action Against Hunger said at least six bodies were disinterred in a cemetery in Trincomalee in the presence of a magistrate, judicial medical officers and relatives.
Seventeen local staff of the group were found slain execution-style in the town of Mutur in early August amid heavy fighting between government troops and Tamil Tiger rebels. The
killings prompted an international outcry and U.N. demands for an investigation. Two bodies were exhumed last month for further examination.
Nordic cease-fire monitors have said that they are convinced that government troops were behind the massacre, a charge vehemently denied by the government.
While the monitors said that their assessment was based on the heavy presence of government troops in Mutur at the time, the government said a post-mortem examination suggested the possible time of the killing was when the Tigers held the town for four days.
Sri Lankan security spokesman Keheliya Rambukwella accused the rebels of staging deadly attacks to provoke a backlash against ethnic Tamils and win international sympathy ahead of peace talks starting October 28 in Switzerland.
Rambukwella said the government would attend the talks despite the suicide attacks. The rebels told a Japanese peace envoy in their northern stronghold that they were also committed to the talks.
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Just days following the suicide attack of unarmed Sri Lankan naval officers in Habarana, another was launched in the early hours of the morning in the southern port city of Galle. Official reports stipulate that terrorists, under the guise of fishermen in 5 boats entered the harbor and detonated after ramming into gunboats anchored at the naval base. Initial reports confirm that at least 16 people were killed and scores of others were injured in the blast.

The government has accused the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam, LTTE, a militant separatist group, banned as a terrorist organisation in countries such as United States, England, India and Australia of conducting both attacks. Though the organization has not claimed responsibility for either, they are also yet to claim responsibility in a string of such attacks, including the assassination of the Indian Prime Minister, Rajiv Gandhi, allegedly as retribution for "war-crimes" committed by the Indian Peace Keeping Force in Sri Lanka.

Analysts believe that the attack on the port city of Galle, a UNESCO heritage site and the heart of Sri Lanka's tourist industry was aimed at sparking a government response in the lead up to talks between the government and the LTTE, as well serving an economic blow in the lead up to peak tourist season on the island.

The presence of envoys from the U.S., Japan and Norway are expected for this week's scheduled government talks with the LTTE.