COLOMBO: Gunmen claiming to be police have abducted and shot dead two Red Cross employees in Sri Lanka less than a week after the country pledged greater security for aid workers, the charity told AFP.

The Geneva-based charity said the bullet-riddled bodies of S. Shanmungaligam and K. Chandramohan were discovered late Saturday in the central town of Ratnapura, hours after they were abducted from the main railway station in Colombo. "The two were part of a group of six aid workers brought from Batticaloa (in the island s east) for a training programme related to tsunami relief work last week," Red Cross director general Neville Nanayakkara told AFP.

The deaths mark the worst attack against aid workers in Sri Lanka since the massacre of 17 French aid workers in August. "Some people in civilian clothes said they were from the police and wanted to see the identity cards of the six workers," Nanayakkara said. "They took away two of them, saying it was for further questioning." He said they were alerted to the bodies found in Ratnapura after a local television channel on Saturday night showed images of unidentified victims found in the area.

Both workers belonged to Sri Lanka s minority Tamil community. Their killing came on the same day that President Mahinda Rajapakse met with relatives of more than 100 people who had gone missing in recent months.

On May 29, key Sri Lankan aid donors announced the government had offered security guarantees for their workers who have been accused by state media and ministers of supporting Tamil Tiger rebels. Following the guarantees, the aid groups from the US, UN and European Union among others agreed to return to work in northern and eastern areas of the country, the scene of almost daily fighting.The aid workers help refugees from the war and work on reconstruction projects to help those displaced by the December 2004 tsunami. 

Fighting in the region has killed more than 5,000 people in the past 18 months. The Tamil Tigers have been fighting for a separate homeland since 1972. More than 60,000 people have been killed in the conflict.

The deaths in August of the local workers for the French charity Action Against Hunger in the northeastern town of Muttur were blamed by Scandinavian ceasefire monitors on the military, a charge denied by defence authorities.

The case is now being investigated by a special Presidential Commission under international supervision.