Violence continued to grip Sri Lanka's Eastern Province Wednesday in two separate shooting incidents, police said Thursday.

In the first incident which took place around 9:30 a.m. local time (0330 GMT), a member belonging to a rival group of the Tamil Tigers was shot dead at Batticaloa.

A 35-year-old Eelam People's Revolutionary Liberation Front member was gunned down near the main market in the town.

In the other incident which happened at 9:30 p.m. local time ( 1530 GMT), the former chairman of the Trincomalee Urban Council P. Suriyamoorthi was wounded.

The city was under a police curfew Tuesday night following communal tension. One person was killed and four others were injured as the majority Sinhala community had defied a Tamil Tiger sympathetic group's call to stage a protest in the area.

The Tamil group was demanding the removal of a newly-erected Buddhist statue in the city.

The violence in the east has irked the international truce monitoring group, the Sri Lanka Monitoring Mission (SLMM), who said that the incidents have affected the maintenance of the Norwegian backed cease-fire between the Tamil Tigers and the government troops.

Source: Xinhua