COLOMBO: Sri Lankan soldiers continued their push toward the Tamil Tiger rebels’ de facto capital in the north, but faced stiff rebel resistance that left dozens dead on both sides, the military said yesterday.
Government troops destroyed rebel defenses and breached huge earth barriers Sunday as they moved toward the rebel headquarters in Kilinochchi, the military said in a statement. Tamil rebels counterattacked at several points, sparking fierce battles that killed 120 guerrillas and 27 soldiers, it said.
A pro-rebel report, meanwhile, said the guerrillas killed 43 soldiers in a separate battle Sunday and halted the government’s march toward a strategic crossroads northwest of Kilinochchi.
Heavy fighting raged along three fronts as troops closed in on the town of Kilinochchi, the ministry said. But it added that the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) were putting up stiff resistance. “Twenty-seven soldiers have made their ultimate sacrifice for the motherland while 70 others suffered injuries during the battle. A few other soldiers have not been able to join with their units so far,” a ministry statement said.
It said intercepted radio transmissions of the Tigers indicated that they had also suffered heavy casualties. “Over 120 LTTE cadres have been killed and 80 others injured in the Kilinochchi area since Sunday morning,” the ministry said.
TamilNet quoted unidentified rebel officials as saying the clash occurred in Nalloor village. The rebels took away the bodies of eight soldiers, it said. Rebel officials could not be contacted for comment on the government report because communication lines to the north have been severed.
The head of the government’s Security Information Center, Lakshman Hulugalle, declined to comment on the report by the pro-rebel website, saying the government would not respond to accounts by rebel supporters.
Both sides routinely inflate the number of casualties they inflict on their opponents, and it is not possible to verify battlefield reports because most journalists are barred from the war zone.
The government has vowed to crush the rebels and end their decades-old separatist campaign. Government soldiers in recent months have captured a number of key rebel bases and large swaths of land previously controlled by the guerrillas, seizing the country’s entire west and forcing the insurgents into a shrinking territory in the northeast.
However, the rebels have offered stiff resistance as the soldiers approach Kilinochchi. The Tamil Tigers have fought since 1983 to create an independent homeland for ethnic minority Tamils who have suffered marginalization by successive governments controlled by ethnic Sinhalese.
Another 35 soldiers were killed in fighting on Friday and Saturday along the southern defenses of Kilinochchi, TamilNet said.
Sri Lanka’s government, which pulled out of a Norwegian-brokered truce in January, has vowed to take the Tiger political capital and dismantle the LTTE’s mini-state.
Last week, the military captured the strategically important town of Pooneryn on the northern edge of the mainland and opened a new front to advance on Kilinochchi from the north.
The Tigers tacitly admitted that they had lost vast areas to advancing government forces, and said the current fighting was at a location just eight kilometers west of Kilinochchi.
