COLOMBO: Sri Lankan troops killed at least 34 separatist Tamil Tiger guerrillas in the latest phase of an advance into rebel-held turf that has produced some of the bloodiest fighting in a decade, the military said yesterday.
After seizing a string of strategic points from the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) in the last two weeks, the army is facing stiff resistance pushing toward the de facto rebel capital of Kilinochchi — a symbolic target.
“Troops killed 30 LTTE terrorists and wounded 24 others in Thursday’s fighting,” a military spokesman who did not give his name in line with policy. He said five soldiers also died and 14 were wounded in the same fighting. The military later said it had recovered four additional rebel bodies.
The rebels were not immediately available to comment on the battlefield casualties. But the pro-rebel website www.tamilnet.com quoted unnamed Tiger officials as saying they had repulsed an army advance and killed at least one soldier.
The LTTE also accused the army of firing artillery shells into a civilian area in Kilinochchi and destroying a store. “The Sri Lanka military, it appears, is ever-ready to treat all stock belonging to Tamils as a threat and does not hesitate to destroy (it),” the LTTE statement said.
The military dismissed the claim. “Our target is very clear — the forward defense line of the LTTE,” military spokesman Brig. Udaya Nanayakkara said. “We know exactly where the civilians were kept by the LTTE. We don’t fire at them.”
The fighting is taking place along a front line that curves south along roughly 100 km of mostly thick jungle, from the western port of Nachikudah to near just south of the rebel-held Mullaitivu port on the eastern shore.
There, the guerrillas are dug into trenches and bunkers behind booby-trapped and mined defense lines, which the army is hitting with artillery, air strikes and ground troops in the north of the Indian Ocean island nation.
