Sri Lankan forces fight rebels for key water reservoir
“Our air force is targeting terrorist bases and our ground troops have started operations today,” military spokesman Brigadier Prasad Samarasinghe said.
The bombing was intended to prevent rebels from bringing reinforcements into the eastern Trincomalee district, he added.
A pro-rebel website said that Tamil Tigers had destroyed a navy boat in a battle near an eastern port killing eight sailors.
The battle erupted when rebels attacked a ship that was carrying more than 850 Government soldiers from northern Jaffna peninsula to the Trincomalee port.
Navy spokesman commander DKP Dassanayake denied the report and said sailors destroyed three rebel attack boats. He said he was unaware of rebel casualties.
The latest attempt to break the 12-day rebel blockade of the facility’s canal gate follows an intense gun battle near Trincomalee, as well as fighting and attacks elsewhere that killed at least 68 people — 39 rebels, 27 soldiers and two civilians, the military said.
The Tamil Tiger rebels surrounded the reservoir — which supplies the villages with drinking and irrigation water — on July 20, accusing the Government of reneging on a promise to build a water tower for people in rebel-held areas.
Separately, TamilNet website said unidentified gunmen shot and killed two Tamils in separate incidents in the north-east.
The island-nation’s north-east is divided into Government and rebel-held areas. The sluice gate is in a guerrilla-controlled territory but supplies water to Government-held areas.
The Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam took up arms against the Government in 1983 to fight for a homeland for Sri Lanka’s 3.2 million ethnic Tamils, who had faced decades of discrimination. The civil war killed about 65,000 people.
In recent months, the ceasefire has nearly collapsed, and renewed fighting has killed more than 800 people — half of them civilians — since December, according to Nordic ceasefire monitoring mission.
“In reality, there is no ceasefire agreement in this area in Trincomalee today,” Ulf Henricsson, a retired Swedish general in charge of the monitoring mission said.
