Fighting in eastern Sri Lanka kills at least 23
Commandos overran a Tamil Tiger rebel base in eastern Sri Lanka today, killing at least 20 guerrillas in fighting that also left three commandos dead, the military said.
The clash occurred in Ampara district 130 miles east of the capital, Colombo, said military spokesman Brig Prasad Samarasinghe.
The rebel base was thought to be a “threat to the main road” where suspected rebels often activate roadside bombs targeting the military, Samarasinghe said.
“We were told that at least 20 Tigers were killed,” he said. Adding that three commandos also died and 12 more were wounded.
Meanwhile, the military said artillery-backed ground troops captured three Tiger bases and a smaller camp overnight in north-eastern Trincomalee district, north of Ampara.
“We have forced the terrorists to flee from these three bases,” Samarasinghe said, adding that another, smaller camp was also overrun. There were 100 to 150 rebels in the bases.
“They have suffered heavy casualties,” Samarasinghe said, without providing a figure. But troops clearing the areas have found bloodstains on the jungle path, suggesting the rebels have suffered casualties, he said.
Trincomalee has a strategic port and serves as a base for the Sri Lankan navy, and a major sea supply route to 40,000 Sri Lankan troops stationed in the northern Jaffna peninsula.
The Tamil Tiger rebels, formally known as the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam, tacitly acknowledged that Sri Lankan troops had taken over the Trincomalee bases. However, rebel officials were not available to comment on the clash in Ampara.
“We had hundreds of bases in that area. Many were closed years back, some were closed recently,” Rasiah Ilanthirayan, the rebel spokesman, said from the insurgents’ headquarters in Kilinochchi.
“It is a matter of walking into vacated places,” Ilanthirayan said, suggesting that the bases were empty when Sri Lankan troops reached them.
“They are beating around the bush without reaching our core area,” he said of the rebels’ strongholds in the jungles and areas in the north, where the army has not begun operations.
The new military offensives coincided with reports that thousands of villagers were fleeing from rebel-held areas in the east, fearing new fighting between the guerrillas and government troops.
At least 13,685 Tamil refugees have crossed into government-held territory in Batticaloa district, Samarasinghe said.
The refugees fear their villages will become battlegrounds as fighting intensifies.
About 4,000 people have died in escalating violence in Sri Lanka since late 2005, when a Norwegian-brokered 2002 cease-fire faltered, European cease-fire monitors say. About 65,000 people were killed before the truce was signed.
The rebels have been fighting since 1983 to create a separate state in the north and north-east for the country’s ethnic Tamil minority, following decades of discrimination by the Sinhalese majority.
Separately today, eight people including two army officers and two soldiers were reported missing in a wildlife sanctuary.
Samarasinghe said the military men and wildlife officials went into Wilpattu National Park, about 100 miles north of Colombo, to inspect security.
“A search operation is now under-way to find them,” he said.
However, the pro-rebel TamilNet Web site said the missing men had been killed in a gunfire ambush inside the sanctuary. The site did not carry a Tiger claim of responsibility for the attack.
The park, which borders the conflict zone, remained closed after fighting erupted in the region in 1980s. It had been partly reopened three years ago after the ceasefire.
