The Sri Lankan High Commission denied its army was involved in atrocities against the ethnic Tamil minority after British television aired video Tuesday allegedly showing a soldier executing two men.
Channel 4 News showed disturbing footage of a man dressed in army uniform shooting a naked, bound and blindfolded man in the back of the head, while the bodies of several other men were seen nearby in a muddy field.
Another man was also shot in the same way towards the end of the video.
Tonight, the Sri Lankan High Commission denied the government had carried out atrocities against the Tamil community.
The Sri Lankan government launched a large scale military offensive in January capturing the Tamil Tiger held town of Kilinochchi. The army then steadily pushed the rebels into an small area of the north-east.
Be warned - there are extremely disturbing scenes in this report from our foreign affairs correspondent Jonathan Miller.
The United Nations has estimated that between 80,000 and 100,000 people have been killed in Sri Lanka's drawn out Tamil separatist conflict which the security forces declared ended in May.
The decades-long ethnic conflict ended after the military took control of all rebel-held territory and killed the group's leader, Velupillai Prabhakaran.
Journalists were barred from the conflict zone in the country's northeast where rights groups said a "humanitarian crisis" unfolded without a media presence.
Sri Lanka High Commission response:-
"The High Commission of Sri Lanka categorically deny that the Sri Lankan armed forces engaged in atrocities against Sri Lankan Tamil community. They were only engaged in a military offensive against the LTTE.
"The High Commission has noted that in many instances in the past, various media institutions used doctored videos, photographs and documents to defame the Sri Lankan government and armed forces. Therefore, we request you to verify the authenticity of the video footage before the telecast".
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