Colombo (ANTARA News/AFP) - A Sri Lankan government probe into the civil war against Tamil rebels has called for further investigations of alleged war crimes committed in the final stages of fighting in 2009, reports said Sunday.

The Lessons Learnt and Reconciliation Commission (LLRC), which has been widely criticised as biased by international rights groups, concluded that some evidence warranted a new inquiry, the local Sunday Times said.

The commission handed over the report to President Mahinda Rajapakse Sunday, spokesman Bandula Jayasekara confirmed, but it is not clear when exactly it will be made public.

"The president received the report and reiterated that he will study it and present it to parliament so that it will become a public document thereafter," Jayasekara said without discussing the contents of the report.

However, local media reports said the LLRC report concluded that some evidence it collected warranted a new inquiry.

The Ceylon Today newspaper said the LLRC, headed by a retired attorney general, had recommended prosecuting a number of soldiers for their role in the final stages of the conflict.

"Several soldiers and a few senior officers are likely to be taken to task by the government for alleged military excesses during the war," the Ceylon Today weekly said.

The 400-page dossier "will ask the government to investigate incidents that may have occurred during the final stages of the war", the Sunday Times said, adding that "information points to prima facie evidence but no names named".

Both government forces and the Tamil Tiger separatists have been accused of war crimes in the months before the rebels were finally crushed in May 2009, ending nearly four decades of warfare on the island.

The LLRC, appointed in May last year, was not mandated to probe war crimes but asked to find out why a Norwegian-brokered 2002 truce failed and to recommend ways to prevent the island slipping back to ethnic conflict.

The Sunday Times said that the LLRC had also described a documentary by Britain`s Channel 4 television alleging to show government troops executing suspected Tamil rebels as a "total fabrication".

A report in April by a panel commissioned by UN chief Ban Ki-moon noted "credible allegations" of war crimes committed by both sides. Colombo denied the claims, maintaining that troops did not kill a single civilian. (*)

Editor: Kunto Wibisono
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