A leading legislator from Sri Lanka's Tamil party Tamil National Alliance (TNA) was shot dead at a midnight mass in the Eastern Province, police said Sunday.

The 71-year-old Joseph Pararajasingham was shot at about 1:20 a. m. (1920 GMT) at close range by unidentified gunmen at St. Mary's co-cathedral church at Batticaloa, about 303 km east of the capital Colombo.

The senior parliamentarian was attending the mass on Christmas eve when the assassin reached near him and shot at him. His armed security opened fire at the suspected assassins who were fleeing the scene.

Eight others, including Pararajasingham's wife were injured at the midnight mass, said the police.

No organization had claimed responsibility for the assassination and no arrests had been made, the police said.

However, the police suspected the loyalists of the LTTE renegade Karuna alias Vinayagamurthi Muralitharan for the assassination.

Pararajasingham entered parliament in 1990 and had been a legislator since then.

The TNA, with 22 seats in the 225-member national parliament, is a proxy of the rebel Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE).

Elsewhere in the Eastern Province, the LTTE was blamed for two murders on Saturday, one in the port town of Trincomalee and the other in Eravur.

Escalation of violence and murders in the Northern and Eastern provinces since the early this month has caused alarm among the international truce monitors and the nations backing the Norwegian backed peace process.

The international truce monitors have condemned the circle of violence and asked for restrain from the government and the LTTE.

The two parties entered into a cease-fire in 2002, but the peace process was stalled in April 2003 as the LTTE withdrew talks with the government.

Source: Xinhua