Polls violence sparks fears of factional war in Lanka

He had been a supporter of breakaway Tamil Tiger leader V. Muralitharan, better known as Karuna, who led an unprecedented split from the main Tiger guerrilla organisation earlier this month.

Gunmen entered Sathya-moorthy's house in the heart of the Batticaloa town, 300km east of the capital Colombo by road, and escaped after spraying him and his brother-in-law with bullets, officials said.

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"He had refused to accept government security," a military official said when contacted by phone.

Sathyamoorthy had organised several protests in the region in support of Karuna after the main rebel organisation expelled him and labelled him a traitor, an euphemism for condemning him to death.

Karuna had refused to step down and is in control over some 5,000 to 6,000 Tiger fighters who form about a third of the original fighting force of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE).

The split came days after another candidate in Friday's election was shot dead by Tamil rebels in Batticaloa.

The two Tiger factions blamed each other for that killing of a member of Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe's United National Party (UNP).

The latest killings came amid a series of shootings that have targeted the top electoral official in the coastal region of Batticaloa, Ratnam Manoguruswamy and two Tamil Tamil candidates in the capital.

One of the candidates, T. Maheswaran was shot and wounded in the capital Colombo on Saturday as he left a Hindu temple.