Sri Lanka repulses major Tamil attack

The Sri Lankan military said today that its forces thwarted a major Tamil Tiger rebel attack on a strategic jetty in Muttur, killing 35 insurgents, as a Norwegian peace envoy travelled to the northern rebel heartland in an effort to prevent the country from sliding back into full-blown civil war.

“Our forces have repulsed a major terrorist attack, and based on our ground information we have learned that 35 bodies of terrorists are lying there,” military spokesman Maj. Upali Rajapakse said in Colombo. The rebels had tried to capture a jetty that is a major sea supply link for the military, he said.

Rajapakse said the military had retrieved the bodies of nine rebels and would hand them over to the International Committee of the Red Cross.

There was no independent confirmation of the military’s claim. The Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam made no mention of the battle and did not report any losses on its Web sites.

Muttur, across a bay from Trincomalee, has been the scene of the worst clashes since the two sides signed a Norwegian-brokered cease-fire in 2002. The truce has now nearly collapsed.

Soldiers and insurgents traded mortar fire early today in Muttur, as fighting continued there for a sixth day.

“The terrorists are firing artillery at us and we are retaliating,” Rajapakse said. He had no information about any casualties from Saturday’s shelling.

The military says at least 11,000 refugees have fled Muttur to safer areas.

The town remains largely off-limits to outsiders because of the fighting.

Norwegian peace envoy Jon Hanssen-Bauer, who arrived in Colombo yesterday to try to pull the two sides back from the brink of full-scale civil war, was travelling to Jaffna, the Tamil heartland in the north, to meet with local officials before heading to Kilinochchi, Norwegian Embassy spokesman Tom Knappskog said.

Knappskog said the envoy would spend the night in Kilinochchi, the rebel stronghold, for extensive discussions with rebel officials.

Sri Lanka’s’ civil war killed about 65,000 people before the 2002 cease-fire, which left parts of the north and east under rebel control. While the agreement officially remains in effect, escalating violence since December has killed at least 900 people, half of them civilians. Over the past few weeks, the violence has spiked further with an increase in daily killings.