COLOMBO: Sri Lanka’s Tamil Tiger rebels claimed killing more than 100 government soldiers yesterday while beating back a fresh offensive against their besieged political capital in the island’s north.
The Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) repulsed a two-pronged assault against the town of Kilinochchi after seven hours of fighting, a senior Tiger official, S. Puleedevan said. He told the pro-rebel TamilNet website that they also wounded more than 250 government troops, but did not give details of rebel casualties.
His claim came hours after the military said that security forces killed at least 56 Tamil Tiger rebels for the loss of 10 soldiers killed in fresh fighting yesterday. About 40 soldiers and 90 rebels were wounded in the battles outside Kilinochchi, the military said in a statement.
The latest clashes came a day after the Tigers said they killed another 60 soldiers and wounded 150 in a counterattack on the outskirts of Kilinochchi over the weekend. Both sides are known to make exaggerated claims about casualties they have inflicted on each other, and independent verification is virtually impossible as journalists and aid workers are barred from the conflict area.
Sri Lanka’s military also carried out air attacks against suspected Tamil Tiger targets earlier on Monday to support ground troops, the military statement said.
Sri Lankan troops also launched a major attack yesterday against Tamil rebel fortifications, the military said. Government forces have seized a large area of rebel-held territory in recent months and backed the Tigers into small areas in the lush jungles of the island nation’s northeast.
The military succeeded in seizing another 2-kilometer stretch of the 17-kilometer long earthen bunker yesterday. The army now controls more than 7 kilometers, military spokesman Brig. Udaya Nanayakkara said.
Meanwhile, President Mahinda Rajapaksa has asked the LTTE to allow 300,000 civilians in rebel-held areas to move away from the fighting. “With the dawn of 2009, the LTTE should release all innocent Tamil people it is holding hostage and in bondage using them as human shields, and allow them to come to the safe areas,” the president said in a statement yesterday.
Also yesterday, air force jets destroyed five rebel attack boats off the northeastern coast, Nanayakkara said. Fighter jets hit an attack craft off the Mullaittivu coast and later bombed four more boats camouflaged and anchored in the same area, Nanayakkara said. He said casualty figures were not known.
Independent verification of battlefield reports released by the two sides is not possible because journalists are barred from the war zone. Both in the past have exaggerated their enemy’s death toll while lowering their own.
Rajapaksa threatened to formally ban the LTTE as a terrorist group, a week after Human Rights Watch said the Tigers were using thousands of Tamil civilians as human shields and forcing them into combat duty or battlefield labor.
“Release all innocent Tamils held in bondage and hostage by you as human shields by the dawn of 2009. If you fail to do so, you will face proscription and all other consequences,” the president’s office quoted Rajapaksa as saying.
Aid groups estimate there are about 230,000 people trapped in war zone where the military and rebels are locked in one of the most decisive phases so far in one of Asia’s oldest civil wars. Analysts said the threat was hollow, since the LTTE is in effect already a banned organization in Sri Lanka and is on US, E.U. and Indian lists of banned terrorist groups.
“There is a major military battle being fought and foreign governments being canvassed to ban it,” said Jehan Perera, an analyst with the nonpartisan National Peace Council. “What greater hardship can government impose? It’s a symbolic move.”
